[gentium] gentium update status -> no more type 1?

[Karl Berry]

tl;dr The only maintainable way forward I see for Gentium is to drop the
Type 1's and just redistribute SIL's original TrueType fonts. 
(BTW, maybe a .sty file could be usefully created to access Gentium TTF
features, but I can't undertake that.)

This is because of the overlapping/intersecting splines which have been
reported here, in g, e, d, other chars. Victor says that there will most
likely be more overlaps in the future, certainly not fewer.  It's a
feature for him, not a bug.
https://github.com/silnrsi/font-gentium/issues/36

I've been poking around for options to handle them, and can't find any
good way:

- The ttf2pt1 program that converts .ttf to Type 1 fails; the resulting
pfa or pfb can't be read by pdftex or fontforge.

- Converting ttf to otf and then using otftotfm gives a usable pfb, but
the overlapping splines are still there in the glyphs, so surely the
rendering problem will remain.

Victor also says that he knows of no reliable overlap removal procedure,
and thus any attempt at removing overlaps would require reviewing every
glyph in every font, which is untenable.

I find it puzzling that Gentium requires these intersecting splines, but
I've seen no such reports for any other font. Anyway.

I suppose we could continue to distribute the Type 1's as generated by
otftotfm or fontforge, with the overlapping splines, along with a
warning that there will be rendering problems in some RIPs and
Acrobat. (The printed book of the LaTeX Companion third edition shows
the problem, for example.)  I expect some users would not notice any
such warning, though.

In any case, someone would need to come forward to generate the Type 1's
and other support files. I can't take that on, and Pavel and Mojca are
apparently also busy with other projects, since they haven't replied to
this recent thread. If anyone is interested, let me know. (I see
very few people on this list, so it does not seem likely.)

Gentium continues to be updated, and the current gentium-tug on CTAN is
already a couple of releases behind. So I don't want to just do nothing.

Thanks,
Karl