[XeTeX] \font syntax

Hans Hagen pragma at wxs.nl
Tue Jul 31 15:01:26 CEST 2007


Roland Kuhn wrote:
> Hi Jonathan!
> 
> On 31 Jul 2007, at 13:27, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> 
>>> but why not use the 'tfm search' as a fallback then? if a "name"
>>> cannot
>>> be resolved, search for a tfm one instead
>>
>> As I mentioned, XeTeX used to do this, but I'm not entirely convinced
>> it's a good idea. E.g., error messages may be less confusing if it's
>> clear which kind of font (or search) is being requested. But I'm
>> interested to hear what people think.... anyone else with opinions on
>> this?
>>
> I'm sure my vote does not carry as much weight as that of someone who 
> actually contributed code/etc., but I find your reasoning consistent and 
> matching my own expectations. Trying hard to guess what a user might 
> have wanted usually fails catastrophically. The only case known to me 
> which is at least debatable is Perl ;-) I think it is better to give a 
> clear error message than to magically "fix" user errors. The argument of 
> a robust interface is flawed exactly because TFM and OTF have different 
> behaviour per se.

well, i now do some fuzzy runtime lookup and leave it to the users to 
complain if they dislike the delay/overhead -)

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------


More information about the XeTeX mailing list