[pdftex] Problems with microtypographic extensions (and specific older pdfTeX versions?)

[Hans Hagen]

Frank Küster wrote:

>Hi pdfTeX people,
>
>in our Debian BTS we have a problem report about \pdfadjustspacing and
>\pdfprotrudechars.  In the previous Debian stable release with an
>ancient pdfTeX, the user simply put 
>
>\pdfadjustspacing=2
>\pdfprotrudechars=2 
>
>in his preamble and observed positive effects.  Now with the release of
>  
>
must have been a very special version of pdftex because normally one 
also has to set up fonts accordingly

>Debian sarge, we have a still ancient, but newer version of teTeX
>(2.0.2) with pdfTeX (Web2C 7.4.5) 3.14159-1.10b, and he reports that
>this stopped working.  A current pdfcprot.sty from CTAN seems to work
>with this pdfTeX version, but it only does character protruding, no
>space changes and thus no altered linebreaks.
>
>  
>
the protrusion mechanisms have changed over time (first very 
experimental, then less experimental but as part of thanh's phd thesis 
work, after that it changed due to soem conslusions based on research, 
and recently it has reached a mature stage.

>microtype.sty is supposed to do both, but with teTeX-2.0.2 the user gets
>an error when the expanded font is created:
>
>kpathsea: Illegal fontname `aer12+20': contains '+'
>  
>
the current pdftex does not need additional external font resources

>Since the user reports that adjustspacing has worked even with
>teTeX-1.0.7 in Debian woody, there should be some way to do it in
>teTeX-2.0.2.  Do you have any tips how it should be done?
>  
>
update to the latest greatest; in this respect you can just consider the older versions to be instable versions; also, these features have been tagged 'experimental and subjected to changes and fixes'

Hans 

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