fontname mapping file for TeX

[Tomas G. Rokicki <rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU>]

The font file name mapping within TeX might be okay as an adaption to local
conditions, but we should definitely not abandon the standard font file names
we are trying to adopt.  Ideally, a TeX file using PostScript fonts should be
close to as portable as a TeX file using CM fonts.

My initial reaction to the idea of implementing a font mapping file in TeX
for the implementations I support is the same as that of using the MLTeX
charsubdef modification---I hate to do it, because it gives the users one
more thing that won't work on their mainframe/PC/whatever; that they can't
count on TeX being TeX.  If such an idea is ordained by TUG, after more
discussion and detailed specification, then I'd almost definitely do it.
(Perhaps we should discuss whether the MLTeX/charsubdef stuff should be
blessed?  How do we distinguish implementations that implement some of this
stuff, but maybe not all?  It's not like we can say TeX $355/113$ or
anything.)

For standard PostScript font names---Karl, do you know how Adobe derives the
names when it distributes fonts in MSDOS format?  Maybe we can adopt those
names where they fit and where possible for the ones that don't already have
names?  Maybe we can get a master list of such names from Adobe.  (I'd like
to automate the installation of a new PS font on a system---at the moment
it requires several runs of afm2tfm, vptovf, edit psfonts.map, rename and
copy all over the place.)  Maybe I'll even write a macro that reads
psfonts.map and generates a font list of available fonts at that site . . .