[texhax] Baskervald no spaces...

[Paul Isambert]

<bnb at ams.org> a écrit:
> re the baskervald font,
> 
>     [...] the resultant .dvi file has no spaces between
>     words and, apparently, no kerning either... it all comes out as one big glop,
>     even on the most minimal test, under plain TeX on the 2012 TeXlive system.
>     [...]
> 
>     I tried generating pk-files by hand to see if that made a difference.
>     It did not.  Clearly, there's a step I'm missing in preparing the font
>     for use.  [...]
> 
> sounds to me like you haven't got all the
> necessary fontdimens filled in in the .tfm
> file.

Exactly:

    \font\bvtest=ybvr8r
    \immediate\write0{\the\fontdimen2\bvtest}
    \bye

prints “0.0pt”.

The solution seems to be writing to the font’s author.

Peter King wrote:
> (Suggestions/solutions for plain TeX, please; it may be that this particular
> problem is easier to solve under LaTeX, or XeTeX, or LuaTeX, or ConTeXt, or
> some other variant, but I have strong reasons for staying with plain TeX if
> at all possible.)

Just for the record, plain TeX can be used in XeTeX and LuaTeX. I do the latter
every day :)

(In other words, formats aren’t engines, but everybody here knows that.)

Best,
Paul