glyph aliases

[Vladimir Volovich]

Hi,

the current thread is about different glyph naming schemes used in
different fonts.

i think that the best solution to this problem is to use mechanusm of
glyph aliasing similar to the one used in cyrfinst package
(CTAN:macros/latex/contrib/supported/t2/cyrfinst).

in this mechanism we use the following principles:

all MTX and ETX files should use one consistent glyph naming scheme,
specific for fontinst which is a big advantage. there is no need to
worry about how that or another font names some glyph: all the MTX and
ETX files use the single scheme.

all the glyph naming variants are loaded into fontinst from files
which define commonly used aliases. these aliasing commands look like:

\galias{fontinst-glyph-name}{variant1,variant2,...}

where fontinst-glyph-name is a glyph name to be used in MTX and ETX
files, while `variant1', `variant2', ... are variants of names for
this glyph used in different fonts.

Once loaded, the glyph aliasing file will automatically rename all
glyphs which are named `variant1' or `variant2' or ... in AFM files to
`fontinst-glyph-name' on the stage of creating MTX files from AFM
files (which fontinst does automatically for each AFM file).

Then, any MTX and ETX files loaded, will see only ONE consistent glyph
naming scheme unique to fontinst!

Best,
v.