Re: psnfss and lw35nfss

[Thierry Bouche <Thierry.Bouche@ujf-grenoble.fr>]

Concernant « Re: psnfss and lw35nfss », Sebastian Rahtz écrit :
 > Berthold K. P. Horn writes:
 >  > 
 >  > In own opinion a TFM file should not lie.  If there is no character
 >  > this should be what the TFM file says.
 > 
 > i think its a good principle.
 > 

I think there is no alternative principle. It's The Truth! 

 >  > And TeX should announce the missing character *and* its context on
 >  > screen.  I know this goes against modifying TeX in any way, but surely
 >  > this is just useful informational stuff added on that does not affect
 > well, here you have it. Alan wants a practical system that warns
 > people in the most obvious way, 

but,
 > because TeX has this curious blind spot.

it is a dilemna. I remember the old days when there were a t1enc.sty
but not yet an inputenc.sty, all the time spent in debugging lost
8bits charachters! All people whining on the news because they had
lost accented letters! The behaviour of TeX is really faulty here.
 
 > who supports Alan's view of all this?
 > 

Users must be warned in some way, I'm not satisfied with the `every
drivers emits a warning' method as it frightens uselessly end-users in
most cases (hence my first reaction), but if it's the only method
available, I think we should keep it

 >  >   * realize that fontinst isn't well prepared to fake small caps in 8r
 >  >     (write 8rc.etx)
 > ah yes. could be done
 > 
it's a bit contradictory with the `raw'ness of 8r, no? I think if you
go 8r and like small caps, you should either use a 8r true small caps
font, or do something like S{\fontsize{.8\f@size}{\f@baselineskip}MALL}
which really fits the `raw' aesthetic?

Notice that there is no need of dotlessj in small caps fonts (which is
a relief;-) but we could maybe discuss how to put a dot on capital
I/J...

Regarding dotlessj, the real question is: is it possible to hide the
dot (by any mechanism) automatically with any system for fonts having
an AFM? PS is OK thanks to BD.  Truetype is probably not ok
but I never heard of truetype fonts with afm. What else? 

   Thierry Bouche.       -----       thierry.bouche@ujf-grenoble.fr
          http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~bouche/