[OS X TeX] RE: Newbie TeTex font installation

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 18.11.2005 um 02:20 schrieb Jeff Genung:

> I am disappointed that Thomas Schmitz says that using a new font in 
> LaTeX is
> not difficult, then presents a 16 page set of instructions on how to 
> do it.
> YES, it is difficult, it is very difficult.

True, for what in the end comes out, it is a bit unsatisfactory. When I 
want to return to the lining digits I would have to make a new font 
installation. And the document can't have both at the same time.

But this is ConTeXt: you sea a brilliant idea realised. But when it 
comes to using it, it's often very hard to find out, how to do it right 
and in the end it's not really that what you wanted.

Jeff, since pdfTeX can't make much use of TrueType fonts, it's enough 
to write down the MAP file entries like I mentioned last time and 
create the FD (Font Description) files by editing an existing one and 
saving it under the new name. You won't have fake Small Caps and you 
won't have artificially slanted variants of seriffed upright fonts. You 
can't expand nor compress the fonts neither, so no microtype!

>
> If someone would like to write a simple set of instructions I would 
> like to
> see it, to add either a TT font or a postscript font, but as for me 
> I'll let
> another year pass where everything I've written has been in what was 
> already
> installed.
>

What's the use in intensively describing how to manage to get almost 
nothing out of pdfTeX and TrueType fonts?

*That's my self-made opnion! Anynone is allowed to change it! (Indeed I 
have some more.)*

Once you've made the MAP entries and created the FD files, you won't be 
able to set many non-US ASCII glyphs! Although you have chosen a t1 or 
texnansi input or font encoding. And you're lost when the TTF file is 
faulty (as in case of one Lucida font file from Java and another font I 
met), there doesn't seem to be a way to correct this. And as Thomas 
Schmitz emphasises so much on glyph names: you're lost again when the 
font uses non-standard names for x or 8.

Actually I would like to see what ConTeXt can do with nfssfont.tex or 
fontsmpl.tex when using the TrueType font it has recently installed! 
nfssfont.tex needs to be used as '<some tex> nfssfont.tex < <file with 
input>'. These input line are described in the LaTeX Companion and 
might look like:


	<empty first line>
	T1
	lat
	m
	n
	10
	\bigtest\init
	
	T1
	lat
	b
	n
	10
	\bigtest\bye

Here a local installation on American Typewriter is used in T1 font 
encoding to get the the normal shapes of the regular and bold variants. 
If you want to see what American Typewriter offers in Text Companion 
encoding, just substitute T1 with TS1. The \bigtest has some text 
samples which contain diacritics too. So it gives a strong testimony.

But what is the cryptic command line for this effort?

--
Greetings

   Pete

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