[OS X TeX] idiot's questions

[Ross Moore]

> hi all:
> 
> After many years, I have come back to LaTeX via Richard Koch et al's 
> TeXShop - thanks to
> all involved for allowing me to break free of Word!
> 
> In the meantime, the world of TeX has  got all confusing - I was pre 2e!
> 
> I have two questions. I think one might be hard, the other easy.
> 
> 1) I have a large number of fonts which used to live in my MacOS 9 
> system; typically they have
> a bitmap file and a postscript file and, in some cases, an AFM file. I 
> should think the postscript
> files are in LWFN format.

There are font utilities that convert these to .pfb ,
which is what you need for the  pdfTeX mode of TeXShop,
or to .pfa which is fine for the TeX+Ghostscript mode.


> I would like to create a generalised way of using these fonts in 
> TeXshop. I know that Metafont is a
> better way of doing things than PostScript, but I do like Bembo, Joanna, 
> Sabon, and friends.

Metafont is only better, when you know exactly the resolution for the 
final printing. That seems to be an undefined thing these days,
so scaleable .pfa and .pfb is more usual.

> Last time I used TeX (on Suns) I had a program that converted these 
> fonts to pfb format and then I remember
> making virtual fonts and tfms and so on. I don't suppose any of that 
> would be any use now even
> if I could remember it.

This is *exactly* what you want.
The current teTeX for Mac OS X that TeXShop uses is *identical*
in all regards to other Unix teTeX setups, beyond the interface layer
(which is Mac-only, so far) and the compiled binaries.


 
> Ideally, I'd like to create a package called, say, Bembo, and have it 
> work when I say usepackage{Bembo}
> - and I 'd like also to be able to specify font faces for particular 
> pieces of text.

A lot of these exist already:

Go to:  http://www.ctan.org/search/

Bembo is there; so are Joanna  and  Sabon .
(search in  lowercase )


> Could anyone point me in the right direction here? A reasonably thorough 
> web search has not turned up what
> I need, but I'm not sure where to start.

If you have a CTAN CDROM from a TeX User Group, then everything you need
is already in arm's reach. Otherwise, use the search-engine and download it.

 
> 2) Is there any kind of a change tracking feature in LaTeX that I'm 
> missing? I would like to create docs collaboratively
> in my team... it would be nice to be able to see what's changed. I'm not 

Get them all to sign-up to a TeX User Group;  see  http://www.tug.org .

Then they'll get the TeXLive CD.
You can all then update consistently, and never have any
compatibility problems ever again  (touchwood).


> sure whether I would like a tool that shows this
> in the .tex file or the .pdf file more. Word's change tracking feature 
> does most of what I want, though it is ugly and overuse always corrupts 
> documents. Perhaps the real answer is CVS?

That's a nice way to go.

> Many thanks in advance for any pointers...
> 


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore



> Nick Rich
> 
> 
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