Re: checksum inconsistencies for virtual postscript fonts on CTAN

[Ulrik Vieth <vieth@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>]

Sebastian writes:

> i looked. you say

> % Adobe makes a real Times-Roman smallcaps and old style figures
> \DeclareFontShape{LY1}{ptm}{b}{sc}{
>    <-> ptmbc8y  % tibsc
> }{}

> which works for Times small caps, but will be a dismal failure with
> any font family which gets its small caps from an expert set. in my
> (limited) experience, this is more common than the Times Smallcaps
> way of working.

Judging from adobe.map, Adobe seems to offer real SC or OsF fonts
whenever the smallcaps glyphs are provided in the expert fonts anyway.
In addition, it also offers SC & OsF fonts for a few families such as
Times or Palatino, which don't have any corresponding expert fonts,
but these are relatively rare.

In the first case, the prefered method among fontinst experts seems to
be to ignore the real SC & OsF fonts entirely and use the smallcaps
and/or oldystyle glyphs from the expert fonts instead.  The primary
argument seems to be that the real SC & OsF aren't really necessary
when using virtual fonts anyway, so avoiding them helps to reduce the
number of base font that have to be taken into account.  In the second
case, however, when there only exists SC fonts and no expert fonts,
fontinst would happily use of whatever AFM files it can find.

> ptmbc8y is not in the map file, by the way, so this won't work anyway :-}

More importantly, Times-RomanSC and Times-BoldSC are only available 
if you happen to buy Adobe package #194, but they are not among the
built-in fonts in standard printers, so they should never be
referenced in a lw35 packages.  If that is what you are aiming for,
you only have the choice between faked SC fonts or no SC fonts at all.

Cheers, Ulrik.


P.S. It's interesting to have a closer look at adobe.map to see which
families have or don't expert sets in addition to SC and OsF fonts.
Here are the results:

SC/OsF fonts as part of expert sets:

AGaramond, Utopia, Minion, ACaslon, WalbaumBook, Perpetua,
PopplPontifexBE, ConcordeNova, BodoniBE, MinionMM, ConcordeBE,
CaslonBookBE, SpectrumMT, BodoniOldFaceBE, OctavianMT, Christiana,
GaramondBE, CentaurMT, Formata, Nofret, ApolloMT, Bembo, AJensonMM,
BulmerMT, BriemScriptMM, KeplMM, CronosMM, ChaparralMM, KinesisMM, 
DanteMT, StrayhornMT, BellMT, FournierMT

SC/OsF fonts only:

GaramondThree, Times, TimesTen, Sabon, BauerBodoni, JansonText,
Centennial, Granjon, TrumpMediaeval, Palatino, NewCaledonia,
StempelGaramond, NewBaskerville, Goudy, Caecilia, OldStyleSeven,
CaslonFiveForty, CaslonThree, Aldus-Roman, FairfieldLH, DidotLH,
LinoLetter, Diotima, RuzickaFreehandLH, ElectraLH, OldClaudeLP,
CelestiaAntiqua