Update

[Walter Schmidt]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2002 22:00:48 +1000, Adrian Heathcote wrote:

>The answer is that if you've installed the small caps the old style 
>figures are already there. And you can call them by typing some numbers 
>inside the usual command \textsc{}. 

Imagine that you are using normal figures throughout the
whole document:  Why should \textsc imply oldstyle figures?
And, if you want oldstyle figures everywhere, you always
have to write \textsc -- is this really a good idea?  No!

Y&Y's Lucida Bright fonts exhibit the (bad) behavior you
suggest, but I was never aware of it, and I recently ran
into trouble when using them:  I had declared a special list
environment, where I wanted the labels to be printed with
smallcaps.  Unfortunately, one of the labels included a
number.  Imagine my surprise, when it came out with oldstyle
digits!  (The workaround was finally to write the number in
math mode ;-)

The only valid solution is to declare two different font
families, one with normal figures, and another one with OSF.
\latinfamily can do that, if the OSF comw from expert fonts,
but it does not handle the case of so-called SC/OSF fonts;
you have to write your own \installfont commands then.

best wishes

Walter
-- 
Walter Schmidt
Nuernberger Strasse 76,  91052 Erlangen,  Germany
<mailto:was@VR-Web.de>
<http://home.vr-web.de/was/fonts>