Re: maintaining modes.mf

["Thomas J. Reid" <X066TR@TAMVM1.BITNET>]

>...
>What I did was have a smarter program
>calling Metafont to  look up in a table what mode name to use given
>the font name, device and magnification.
>...
>
>rocky
 
At Texas A&M, we took a similar approach to tuning fonts for our Xerox
printers.  At first, we had a file that listed each font name and the
corresponding mode_def name to be used.  (There were about ten different
mode_defs.)  Later, we wrote a shell script (for UNIX) and an EXEC (for
VM/CMS) which took a file of font names, blacker, and fillin value and
ran METAFONT with a generic mode_def which set the "constant" values such
as resolution, aspect ratio, etc.
 
I think that instead of trying to come up with a relatively cryptic scheme
which maps parameter values to mode_def names, we should use a single mode_
def name for all fonts for a given device and have a "smart program" (when
needed) which reads a file of names and blacker/fillin values.
 
---Tom Reid