.afm-Files after fontinst necessary?

[Lars Hellström]

At 11.39 +0100 2002-02-24, Christian Kuhn wrote:
>Hi,
>
>As far as i did understand, the only thing i need of a font for
>using fontist is the .afm. No .pfb is needed. And the
>Karl-Berry-Scheme is not necessary but highly recommended if i
>don't use \latinfamily magic.

Whereas it is necessary if you do use \latinfamily magic. Yes.

>It is recommended to put the .afm after using fontinst in the
>appropriate path, e.g. \localtexmf\fonts\provider\family. But why?
>IF i'm right - and i have doubts - the metric work is done by
>(pdf)latex using the produced .tfm. Nor the DVI-viewer neither
>dvips or dvipdfm have to know about metrics, they only use the
>outlines in .pfb. So is there another reason for having the .afm in
>their own path except that i have they already renamed in case that
>i have to repeat the use of fontinst?

There could be other programs around that make use of them---on UNIX the
windowing system itself is perhaps the most likely candidate---but that's
just my guess. Another reason for putting these files there is that they
_are_ part of the definition of the font and thus deserve to be kept around
even though you don't normally use them directly.

Lars Hellström