Behaviour of \latinfamily

[Rebecca and Rowland]

>Rebecca and Rowland writes:
> > Righto (to an extent).  What makes \installfamily record anything?  That
> > is, what commands make fontinst store a line to be placed in the fd file?
>see these little creatures like
>...
>   \out_line{
>       \string\DeclareFontShape{#1}{#2}{\subst_series}{#4}{
>        <->\csname typ-\orig_series\endcsname\space *~#2/\orig_series/#4
>       }{}
>...
>
>they write to the .fd file

Right.  But Thierry said that the \endinstallfonts command was the command
that actually did the writing to the files concerned.  This appears to be
not the case.

> > >ligfull TFMs rather than VFs (at an early  step in finst history, i
> > >believe that 8r base fonts were done with afm2tfm, then Constantin
> > >Kahn came with \installrawfonts...)
> >
> > But this can't be right: fontinst doesn't create tfms at all.
>Thierry was just using a short-hand. .pl files become .tfm magically
>after fontinst has run

Magic, eh?  And there was me thinking it was OzMF->Tools->pltotf->Do all
files.  In case you're wondering, I'm not being mindlessly nit-picking.
You get tfms from pl and vpl files.  What the fontinst user needs to know
is exactly which files are produced from which input: just saying you get a
tfm doesn't help.

> > 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
>psyr is used in the mathptm scripts, for instance

Hmm - but it's not used in \latinfamily, though, which is what I was asking
about.

> > 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.
>if you ask for them, yes

How do you do that with \latinfamily?  I've seen \latinfamily fake small
caps when a suitable afm file containing small caps was available.  Can you
say which fount(s) \latinfamily looks for when it's trying to find `real'
small caps?

> > 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
>sure. of course fontinst per se doesnt do this. you have to do that
>yourself. Thierry is talking about the "person using fontinst", rather
>than fontinst itself, sometimes

Right.  The problem is that it's not possible to work out exactly what's
meant unless the distinction is made explicitly.  What the novice fontinst
user needs to know is what files you get out for what input, and how those
files relate to what you need to use the founts in LaTeX.  I understand the
last bit of that perfectly: pl -> tfm, vpl -> tfm+vf, and fds stay as they
are (with the ui->it substitution added).  It's just the correspondance
between input and output that's got me.  But...  I've got more of an idea
of what's going on now than I did at the start of the week.

Thanks
Rowland.