[tex-k] dvips, updmap, and Type 42 fonts

[Karl Berry]

Hi Eddie,

First, let me say thanks.  I very much appreciate all the work you've
done in this area.  Yay for lcdf-typetools :).

    1. dvips learns how to read TT fonts and convert them to T42.

This would be great, and would have been great any time in the past
umpteen years, but someone to do the programming is needed.
Unfortunately, I can't imagine having time to do it myself any time in
the foreseeable future.  If you can take it on, that would be excellent.

    2. Different map files are installed for pdftex and dvips.  

This is already the case -- for dvipdf[m][x] too.  The global files are
pdftex.map vs. psfonts.map vs. dvipdfm.map.  They all have slightly
different map file syntaxes.  I think "simple" entries are the same in
each, though, and the differences are mostly in things like ExtendFont
and SlantFont?  I've never seen the precise differences written down.

   * What is a preferred syntax for adding "pdftex-only" and
    "dvips-only" lines to fonts.map?  Would you like a patch?

Hmm.  You probably know what follows, but I'm writing it out for myself
as much as anyone :).  I don't know if miktex does something similar,
but I surmise so.

In teTeX/TL, the combined big map files above are generated by updmap.
So we can't edit them directly, changes would be lost.

updmap reads updmap.cfg to do its work.  And updmap.cfg itself is
generated during TL installation, and then at any time afterwards by
people or programs running updmap when installing new
packages.

updmap.cfg contains a few global options and then a whole lot of lines like
Map lm.map
The actual map files, like lm.map, comes from the original package
distributions.

So, is there anything relatively clean we can do given this complexity?
How about this: we implement more directives for updmap.cfg, namely
dvipsMap <xfilename>
pdftexMap <yfilename>
dvipdfmMap <zfilename>

Then:
- your tools can generate separate files somefont.dvipsmap,
  somefont.pdftexmap, somefont.dvipdfmap.
- The install stuff can use the appropriate directive.
- updmap can acquire some more options to specify one of the above.
- updmap would append the contents of the given filename to the given
  combined map file only, instead of all three (which is what it does
  now).  I think that would be relatively straightforward.

Thomas, any thoughts?  You've probably worked on all this more than anyone.

    * It would be great if dvips could find t42 fonts automatically.
    Currently I don't think it looks in fonts/type42/.

We already have the variable T42FONTS, but it seems dvips doesn't use
it (I don't know what does).  A patch for that would be welcome.

Thanks,
Karl