[tex-eplain] Is there a list of fonts usable by TeX alone, or aTeX command to return names?

[Laurence.Finston at gmx.net]

> "`dvipdfmx:fatal: CFF: Inconsistent DICT argument number.

I have no idea what this message means.  Can you view the DVI file?  Does dvips work?  Have you checked the dvips or dvipdfmx documentation?  What program isn't finding the TFM file?  It may be that kpathsea isn't finding it.  The paths for finding TeX-related files are defined in texmf.cnf files.  I suggest checking the kpathsea documentation.

As far as I know, "font map" isn't a concept from TeX.  Fonts work the way I've explained or given examples for.  "FM" in "TFM" stands for "font metric" and "T" presumably for TeX, although as I remember, this isn't explicitly stated in _The TeXbook_.  I could be wrong about this.  For converting DVI to PS or PDF, you need the pk files.  This isn't part of TeX;  TeX itself isn't concerned with PostScript.

These aren't eplain issues, so you're likely to get better answers on the more relevant forums and/or mailing lists.

What I sent was just a list of the TFM files installed on my machine (from TeXLive).  They have the names of all the fonts that are pre-installed, usually including a number indicating the type size.  There are various catalogues of fonts available at CTAN and possibly other places, which are more suitable for finding a font one might want to use.

I have found when fonts are specifically designed for use with LaTeX and it's assumed that one loads a particular package in order to use them, it is often impractical to use them with plain TeX because one would have to define a lot of \chardefs.  It's not impossible, but I have seldom or never felt like doing this.

PostScript fonts have no "meta-ness".  That is, they have the same shapes at all sizes.  This has nothing to do with TeX itself, TeX doesn't care what the fonts look like, it only cares about their dimensions.  However, the complete system includes METAFONT and I question whether it makes sense to use TeX to imitate the appearance of documents formatted using MS Word or whatever other packages are available for typesetting documents nowadays.

If you just want Times-Roman, Courier or fonts like that, it shouldn't be too difficult.

> Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Oktober 2023 um 05:46 Uhr
> Von: terry.s at Safe-mail.net
> An: tex-eplain at tug.org
> Betreff: Re: [tex-eplain] Is there a list of fonts usable by TeX alone, or aTeX command to return names?
>
> It's still *all* the fonts in public, but it beats surfing 40,000 directories. Anything I tried so far doesn't work and tells me there's no TFM file even if there is.
>
> But I got a strange error on DSSerif, after TeX gave no error, when trying to convert to DVI with *dvipdfmx*:
> "`dvipdfmx:fatal: CFF: Inconsistent DICT argument number.
> I assume there's something wrong in the font map, but I don't know much about fonts.