[Fontinst] Re: \glyph_parameter change proposal

[Vladimir Volovich]

"LH" == Lars Hellström writes:

 LH> The principal matter generally boils down to this: are
 LH> `-not'-glyphs really glyphs? For \width, \height, \depth, and
 LH> \italic they are certainly just as good as raw glyphs,

that's exactly the reason for my proposal: make these commands work
when there's a "not-glyph". i was not complaining about the
unreadability of error message which occurs when one attempts to use
\height{...} when "..." is not encoded, but i am suggesting to make
commands like \height work properly in more circumstances than they
work now.

it is possible that there is a need to refer to glyph metrics for
unencoded glyphs - e.g. when re-encoding the font to OT2 encoding, one
may still wish to be able to access the \height{x} to set fontdimen
parameters; or when building faked glyphs, it might me useful to refer
to glyph metrics of some other glyphs which might me unencoded.

will the proposed change to the \glyph_parameter command have some
undesired effects? if not, why not change it? :)

Best,
v.