[OS X TeX] Too many virtual fonts (was: Font files clarified)

[Siep]

On Sun, 12 May 2002 23:46:17 +1000
Adrian Heathcote <adrian.heathcote at philosophy.usyd.edu.au> wrote:

> 
> (In fact I wonder if even the vf's might be dispensible with pdftex.)
> 
> Adrian Heathcote

Virtual fonts are used a lot more than is really necessary. One reason is
T1 encoding, which contains a lot of accented characters which aren't
available in commercial fonts and therefore have to be synthesized with
the virtual font mechanism (in the old OT1 encoding accented letters are
synthesized with macros instead).

Another reason is afm2tfm, which produces tfms without kerns or ligatures.

Y&Y (www.yandy.com) developed and advocates texnansi encoding, which does
NOT require virtual fonts since it only contains characters actually
present in commercial fonts; which still includes a lot of accented
letters.