Re: Feature request for DVIPS... (at the last minute?)

[Olaf Weber <infovore@xs4all.nl>]

Melissa O'Neill writes:

> It'd be really neat if DVIPS called a MakeTeXPFA script that could
> attempt to provide the necessary font if DVIPS couldn't find it.
> [...]

As far as Web2C is concerned, support for this not too hard to add.
(Though I'd prefer a shorter monocase name like mktexpfa or mktexpfb.)
But I'd have to know which calling convention to use for such a
script.  The current practice is that the first argument is the name
of the pk, tfm, or mf file to be generated.  Only mktexpk receives
more arguments when called through the kpathsea library.

It seems to me (but correct me if I'm wrong) that in order for several
fonts derived from a single MM to peacefully coexist, their names will
have to be different, which might as well be done by encoding all the
information needed to differentiate instances in their names, and thus
in the name given to the script.

> Given the whole dvips vs. dvipsk business, I'm not sure who would be
> best suited to implementing MakeTeXPFA functionality (assuming others
> would also find it useful), hence my sending this message to three key
> players and CCing it to all the tex-fonts people.

There are two issues: one is making sure that a mktexpfa script is
called by the programs, the other is writing such a script.  I can do
the former for kpathsea, and Tomas Rokicki can do the same for dvips.
Writing the script itself is something I'd prefer to delegate.

-- 
Olaf Weber