The syntax of \latinfamily

[Rebecca and Rowland]

[snip]
>I would believe that a more easily managed solution (that also has the
>advantage of being more in the line of how fontinst generally works) is to
>make a new command, say, \LatinFamily, that has three arguments: One for
>the family name, one for the TeX code that end up in the .fd file, and one
>for influencing \LatinFamily's actions. In this last argument, one should
>not put single letters (these are not very easy to decode), but commands.

[snip]

> From the discussions in tex-fonts the last six months, I
>have learnt that the main source of a euro symbol (which people are likely
>to want) is the Adobe eurofonts, which are not connected to specific font
>families, but which still exist in a few different designs, so that one
>cannot simply use one eurofont with all font families (and expect the euro
>symbol to look right).

Erm...  actually, you can (sort of); just to prove I'm not only a whinging
Pom, you might like to look at this package on CTAN:

macros/latex/contrib/supported/eurofont/

(use Adobe's Eurofonts, Marvosym, China2e, TS1 euro symbols, or fake euro
symbols from any source with any fount.  Also slices, dices, cures
scrofula, and treats dandruff.  This latest version - v1.1 - fixes an
embarrassing psfont.map documentation fault relating to the Marvosym fount.
In case you've not guessed yet, I wrote the damned thing.)

It struck me as just plain inelegant to have to use fontinst every time you
wanted to set up another fount to use euro symbols, and even more inelegant
to have to create all those extra files taking up disc space when there's
simply no need at all.

[snip]

>Now I don't know how much of fontinst that would have to be altered to
>implement this and I wouldn't consider such a change in user interface
>important enough to let it delay the next fontinst release, but I do think
>it is something that would improve the \latinfamily command, so the
>suggested alteration (or something similar) should be made, sooner or later.
>
>Opinions, anyone?

I like this idea an awful lot.  In particular, I think it would be a good
idea to have a command such that one could use small caps glyphs from Adobe
`SC+OsF' founts, which have the SC glyphs listed in the afm files as `A'
and `a' rather than Asmall (etc) as in the `Expert' founts.

Rowland.