Re: What's the relationship between vfs and tfms?

[s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk (Sebastian Rahtz)]

Berthold K. P. Horn writes:
 > isn't what we seem to be talking about here, which is straight-forward
 > use of text fonts in LaTeX 2e.  My point is that in order to get the
 > rarely used fancy features we seem to force complexity in the trivial
 > case.  I have nothing against doing the fancy stuff, just don't like
 > the idea of doing it at the expense of making ordinary things complex
 > for the average users.
 > 
A `simple' case is the use of expert fonts, when you want some characters
>From font A to appear in your apparent font, which is mainly drawn
>From font  B. Virtual fonts are good for this, all agreed? So we need
to have virtual fonts around.

The current `norm' in public domain TeXs (the xxx8r --> xxx7t/8t
system) is there for compatibility with the CM/EC font family, no more
no less. We dont have the luxury of being able to start with new
encodings. Those who dont care about compatibility can just use 8r
fonts on their own, with faster processing and less
complexity/functionality . 

So I would argue that the fonts `we' provide cater for a wide variety
of uses, and the system should stay the same. New users coming in with
new fonts can just make 8r fonts if they want, using afm2tfm or Y&Y
tools, and hey presto. 

Sebastian