Encodings, Non-T1 symbols, and bitmapped fonts...

[oneill@cs.sfu.ca]

Many thanks to Joachim Schrod for explaining the rationale behind the
T1 encoding. Perhaps some of the others on the list just took this as
given, but it's the sort of thing that bears careful repetition.

Given that T1 *does* seem to be a sensible encoding for TeX to use for
text, having a miscellaneous symbols (virtual) font with which contains
the remaining characters found in the Adobe Standard Encoding, ISO-Latin1,
and ISO-Latin-2 does seem to be a good idea, and seems to be one backed
by key people on this list.  It'd be nice if those on the PostScript
side could liaise with J"org Knappen (if they aren't already) so that
their miscellaneous symbol virtual font might have the same encoding as
his miscellaneous symbols font for the DC fonts (I don't think it would
matter if they were different, but if they *can* be the same, then they
probably should be to reduce the proliferation of standards).

On the subject of the DC fonts, I hope that J"org Knappen will not only
announce his work at EuroTeX95, but also more widely on the net and
provide enough information that someone who isn't a METAFONT aficionado
can feel comfortable installing them. In the past I've looked at the
/tex-archive/fonts/dc directory on CTAN a couple of times, and I've
never really felt from what I saw there that it'd be a good investment
of my time -- the documentation file is old (c. 1992), terse, and hidden
away in the metafont sources directory. It also claimed that the DC
fonts were just a pre-release of forthcoming EC fonts, which I'm not at
all sure is true any more. (And there seems to be nothing about them in
any of the FAQs that I could find.)

Finally, to Drahoslav Lim, I have to say that I'm utterly against people
exporting PostScript files with bitmapped fonts when they could have
given out the DVI file. PostScript does not/cannot scale bitmapped fonts
well, and so you more or less have to be printing at the same resolution
(or some simple upward multiple) of the resolution used to create the
file.  I routinely save paper by previewing DVI files on-screen and by
printing them scaled down by one or two magsteps and laying the pages
out 2-up -- if someone gives me a PostScript file with bitmapped fonts,
I can't preview it or scale it down, because doing so greeks the letters.
My view is that if you want to distribute PostScript files, you should
use PostScript fonts (*).

    (*)  Of course, if someone wrote a filter that could take a dvips
	 output file and substitute the bitmapped fonts for ones at a
	 different resolution, I might be happier, except that I think
	 dvips would need be enhanced to include some comments in its
	 output file to make this possible and we'd have to wait until
	 everyone had upgraded to that version.

Best Regards,

    Melissa.