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fontname mapping and standard fontnames

Tom Rocicki says:
 
> 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.
  *Absolutely*; fontmapping isn't worth the bother unless the logical
  fontnames in the map are standardized and some body takes it upon
  itself to maintain the list.  
 
> 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.  

  With a more sympathetic (for implementors) tone than my keyboard can emit,
  I think this is just another case of some implementations are better than
  others, some versions are older than others.  We don't have to like it,
  but we don't have to let it stop us from doing what we need to do to make
  TeX increasingly useful to the community as a whole.  

  I would assume that implementing the filemapping would be most difficult 
  on the systems that are already crunched for memory and have tiny filenames, 
  i.e. MS/PC-DOS and similarly sized kin.  And, for better or worse, those
  machines have begun---and in the fullness of time will complete---
  the move to the big CPU chassis in the sky.  Yes, I TeX on  such a 
  might-be-mistaken-for-a-toy myself; but, no, I wouldn't want that to 
  limit the capabilities of the version of TeX I will install on my new 
  system in 1994.  Well, maybe 1995.

cheers,
Tom


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Thomas Ridgeway, Director,
Humanities and Arts Computing Center/NorthWest Computing Support Center
35 Thomson Hall, University of Washington, DR-10
Seattle, WA 98195   phone: (206)-543-4218
Internet: ridgeway@blackbox.hacc.washington.edu
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