New user question: 8r and 8y

[Rebecca and Rowland]

>I just recently joined this mailing list, so I jumped into the middle of the
>8y vs 8r discussion.
>
>I have a question why people want to move to 8y.

I wasn't aware that anyone did in particular; FWIW, this question is more
of a tex-fonts mailing list question than a fontinst mailing list question,
but since AFAIK everyone who reads fontinst reads tex-fonts, it doesn't
matter all that much.

>    Can you send me details of how to join the tex-fonts mailing list please?
>
>mail tex-fonts-request@math.utah.edu.
>(Generally, write foo-request to join the list foo.)

>  I develop software under
>Windows;  no Mac or Unix stuff.  All I want out of an encoding is that when
>a user types in the key sequence to enter a special or accented character
>the proper character will display on the screen and will typeset in the
>document without any special processing of the file.

You actually want more than that: if the character is made up of `bits' (as
with accented characters with OT1 encoding), any word it's part of won't
hyphenate; and if a word uses characters from more than one fount (which
can happen), again, it won't hyphenate.  That's why T1 is better than OT1.

> Right now, 8r encoding
>gives me that under Windows.  What does 8y give me.

Basically, a different set of glyphs in a single fount.  The advantage of
8r is that if the languages you are working in use *those* glyphs more than
the ones in 8y, you get hyphenation working properly more often.  If, on
the other hand, the languages you are working in use the 8y glyphs more
than the 8r ones, then hyphenation will work properly more often if you use
8y.  Does it really matter which one you use?  No, not really: on the
whole, either one will do if you're writing in English most of the time.
I'd rather use 8r because it wasn't developed commercially (I have a
distrust of commercially-developed stuff like this.  Mind you, having
conversed with the loons on the fontinst mailing list, I don't think 8r has
a particularly sensible parentage.)

If you speak to someone from Y&Y, they will most likely tell you something
different.

[snip]

Rowland.