Behaviour of \latinfamily

[Rebecca and Rowland]

[snip]

>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}

Aha!  :-)))))  So *that's* what all that's about!  It's been bothering for
*ages*.  Another bit of the jigsaw drops into place.

>> 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.

Coo - thanks.  I'll have a look at that file.

>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.

Unfortunately, while I've got the hang of the broad flow of things, it's
the nitty-gritty details I'm missing.  Do you know which founts
\latinfamily considers as a source of small caps glyphs?

>> 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.

Right - but I don't use the perl scripts and I don't have a directory
structure compatible with anything except my own imagination (it covers
three disc volumes for starters and please don't ask why because I'm not
sure I can remember).

>>> If there is no other doucmentation, you have no choice but
>>> writing it! ;-)
>
>> I'm trying...  My head hurts at the moment.
>
>Good luck!

Thanks :-)  And thanks very much for trying to answer my questions.  I
think I'll be getting somewhere useful soon.
Rowland.