Re: Accessing characters outside of OT1 or T1?

["Melissa O'Neill" <oneill@cs.sfu.ca>]

Alan Shutko asked:
>> On another note, is there any convenient way to get access to the
>> other characters in the expert font?  (ie, not just ligatures and
>> osfs, but the superior and inferior digits, etc.)

J"org Knappen replied:
> Don't know about a convenient way. While designing the TS1 encoding I
> suggested to add also a TSA encoding where all those characters from Adobe
> expert fonts can live which aren't covered by T1/TS1.
>
> The reason for not having them in TS1 is that I think that TeX does the
> right thing: It takes the letters from a smaller font and raises/lowers
> them. You can even tune the size ratio between base letters and raised
> letters in TeX. A font cannot give you this kind of flexibility.
>
> Also, the superiors have strange gaps in their encoding. You always will
> hit missing superior letters while typesetting real documents.
>
> Unfortunately noone has yet taken the task to write down a TSA encoding.

An alternate answer would be for someone to write 8x.enc file, and
appropriate FD files for the fonts in question. Sure, it would be specific
to Type 1 Expert Fonts, but I see little harm in that (but then again, I
see LY1 as harmless, and currently am typesetting things in my own custom
encoding based on the PDFDocEncoding (which I call 8p)).

I prefer expert fractions in a non-mathematical work as compared to TeX
fractions. Letting TeX use letters from a smaller font works, but like
faking small caps, may not produce as pleasant a looking result as using
the superior and inferior digits the font designer intended.

    Melissa.