questions & comments

[Ulrik Vieth]

Allin Cottrell writes:

> I have a few comments on the current fontinst distribution, and
> one suggestion.

> So: A suggestion.  Why not get rid of the dvi files currently in
> "doc"  (anyone who knows enough to want them surely knows enough
> to generate them with ease him or herself), and put into "doc"
> the files from contrib/rowland, suitably renamed as
> user.{tex,dvi} or fontinst_guide.{tex,dvi} or some such, to
> avoid confusion with the product of latexing fontinst.dtx? 

I agree, this is indeed a problem.  In fact, in previous releases
fontinst.{tex,dvi} from contrib/rowland used to be placed in the
fontinst/doc directory while it was still maintained by the original
author of fontinst.sty.  

The problem is that things have changed a lot recently.  After
fontinst has been more or less unmaintained for several `unofficial'
releases, I have taken it upon myself to put it all together into
fontinst.dtx, while Rowland has volunteered to work on writing a new
(hopefully more user-friendly) manual based on material of the manual.

Your suggestion of puttting fontinst.{tex,dvi} from contrib/rowland
into doc/fontinst_guide.{tex,dvi} (and also adding a .ps file) is 
certainly a good idea.  You just have to find a meaningful filename 
which doesn't exceed 8 characters. 

> Second comment:  I was a bit puzzled with one aspect of the
> action of fontinst when I fed it mbbr8a.afm, mbbri8a.afm,
> mbbr8x.afm and mbbri8x.afm, and asked it to do
> "\latinfamily{mbbj}{}" (Monotype Bembo).  Mostly I was
> impressed, of course, but in one respect puzzled: in view of the
> "j", why does the caps-and-small-caps virtual font, mbbrc9o, not
> take the oldstyle numerals from the expert set?  It takes the
> small caps from the Expert set OK -- and the basic roman virtual
> font, mbbr9o, takes the oldstyle numerals from there OK -- but
> mbbrc9o sets the lining numerals from mbbr8r.  

It depends on whether Montoype Bembo includes a real small-caps font
as a raw font.  If you have mbbrc8a, it is used to generate the
virtual small-caps fonts mbbrc7t (normal), mbbrc9t (x) or mbbrc9o (j)
and the default digits from the small-caps font (usually oldstyle) 
are used in all cases.  

If you don't have a raw small-caps font mbbrc8a, the virtual
small-caps fonts are faked using mbbr8a and optionally mbbr8x (x,j).
In the latter case, you _should_ get lining digits in 7t and 9t and
oldstyle digits from mbbr8x in 9o.  I thought I had tested it.

> (Also, I wonder,
> why the rigmarole with the "F-ligatures" in the csc font?)

Not sure what you mean.  If the encoding has slots for F-ligatures
they have to be filled as good as possible, even if it is rather
pointless to have them for small-caps fonts.  Should we leave them
empty instead?  I don't think that would be much better either.

Cheers, Ulrik.