Behaviour of \latinfamily

[Ulrik Vieth]

> Hmm...  A question: fontinst says this:

> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CONVERTING AN AFM FILE TO AN MTX FILE %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> %
> % The macro:
> %
> %    \afmtomtx{AFMFILE}{MTXFILE}
> %
> % reads ETXFILE.etx and AFMFILE.afm, and writes the same information
> % out to MTXFILE.mtx.

> Any idea what this ETXFILE.etx is?

I don't think \afmtomtx reads any .etx files at all, since it can 
decode the glyph names from the .afm file.  I suppose it's \pltomtx
which reads a .pl and an .etx to decode which glyph names it should
write to the generated .mtx file.  

As to which .etx file is used, fontinst has a table of declared
encodings.  It looks at the CODINGSCHEME statement in the .pl file 
and finds the corresponding encoding and the name of the .etx file.

\declareencoding{EXTENDED~TEX~FONT~ENCODING~-~LATIN}{T1}
\declareencoding{TEX~TEXT}{OT1}
\declareencoding{TEX~TEXT~WITHOUT~F-LIGATURES}{OT1}
\declareencoding{TEX~TYPEWRITER~TEXT}{OT1TT}
\declareencoding{TEX~MATH~ITALIC}{OML}
\declareencoding{TEX~MATH~SYMBOLS}{OMS}
\declareencoding{TEX~MATH~EXTENSION}{OMX}
\declareencoding{TEXBASE1ENCODING}{8r}


> This doesn't tie up with my observations: I've never seen psyr
> specified anywhere, and this doesn't seem to take into account the
> various fakeries fontinst can do, or take into account any (say)
> founts with small caps that might be present which Sebastian tells
> me will be used if they exist.

Well, psyr is a special case, which is produced by afm2tfm without any
fontinst all.  As for mathptm (which uses psyr), all the \installfont
commands are specified explicitly in tools/mathptm/fontptcm.tex.

As for the small caps, \latinfamily uses the real small caps fonts if
they are used, or install faked ones otherwise.  Thierry's explanation
of what \latinfamily was somewhat simplyfied and did take into account
all details.

> To my mind, installing a fount for use with LaTeX involves creating
> tfm and vf files, moving them to a place on the TeX and dvi driver
> search paths respectively, creating useful fd files, and adding
> lines to the dvi driver's fount mapping file.  Of this, fontinst
> does one job only when you execute a \latinfamily command: creating
> useful (sometimes) fd files for T1 and OT1 encoding, *not* 8r
> encoding.  So fontinst doesn't ever install founts.  This is why I
> ask what you mean when you say `install ... fonts'.

The perl scripts (make-fam.pl) takes care of generating TFM and VF
fonts and installing them in a CTAN-compatible directory structure.
Fontinst just produces and PL and VPL files, and also the .fd files.

>> If there is no other doucmentation, you have no choice but
>> writing it! ;-)

> I'm trying...  My head hurts at the moment.

Good luck!

Cheers, Ulrik.