[tex-live] Re: context / directory structure

[Hans Hagen]

At 00:58 07/05/2004, Karl Berry wrote:

>And as Hans said, the idea of (future) different enc syntaxes being in xml,
>or based on the underlying format (ps, svg, ...), makes sense.  So maybe
>we should have enc/ps instead of enc/dvips, since again, "dvips" is being
>used generically there.

since the vectors resemble postscript, i think that enc/ps is ok

>- Regarding searching:
>My assumption is that if different programs require different syntaxes,
>then there will be different paths.  For instance, pdftex might need
>PDFTEXMAPPATH=texmf/map/pdftex:texmf/map//
>(I don't know what it uses for searching now.)
>Of course if the names are unique, it doesn't matter.

i have been thinking about this last night; the boundary condition that 
files are unique is a dangerous one (where did it come from?); if users 
rely only on map files, and they want for instance to control font 
embedding, they need to tweak map files. Apart from the fact that they need 
to find their way to the right font name (normal, virtual, etc), they then 
have to decide what to do: make a new file, replace the old one; also, they 
have to decide where to put it, main tree, local tree, ...; in this 
process, there can be no guarantees that a file does not get the same name 
(i was bitten by this in the past when i copied psfonts.map, removed all 
the FontNames, because i ran into conflicts with inclusion; then removes 
lots of entries because they slowed down pdftex; finaly got it working when 
i renamed the file to psclean.map, which is probably not a uniaue name 
forever ...)

of course the problem is simular to 'tex files with the same name' but 
there at least we have some extra criterium built in: latex and context and 
... first search on their own paths; also, in context, there are some rules 
with regards to filenames so that context itself can apply some logic; we 
should start treating tex engines in theh same way; this could mean an 
additonal, say:

PDFTEX.MAPPATH

btw, this was one of the reasons for adding more extensive \pdfmapfile and 
\pdfmapline to pdftex; (with the options to add/remove/overload map 
entries); at least this gives us some control.

>- In general:
>The whole enc/map situation is poorly understood by users (including
>me!) and poorly documented (that I've found).  Thomas/Hans, would it
>possible to write something short stating exactly how to use updmap,
>texfont, (other tools?), to install a new font, or list the fonts
>available?  (Those are the two most common desires, in my experience.)

texfont:

- buy a nice font
- create a temp path (say ghz/optima-nova)
- copy the font files (floppy, cdrom) to that path
- run tex font like:

   texfont --afm2pl --encoding=texnansi --vendor=linotype 
--collection=optima-nova --remove
   texfont --afm2pl --encoding=texnansi --vendor=linotype 
--collection=optima-nova --source=ghz/optima-nova --make --install

this will install the files in the tree: pfb files, tfm files (generated 
first), if needed vf files, and of course a map file for this set; also, a 
test file will be generated that when processed will show the installed 
fonts (matrix, composed glyph support, etc).

Installing fontfont meta involves a bit more:

   texfont --afm2pl --en=texnansi --ve=fontfont --co=meta --re
   texfont --afm2pl --en=texnansi --ve=fontfont --co=meta 
--so=fontfont/meta-1 --ma --in --expert
   texfont --afm2pl --en=texnansi --ve=fontfont --co=meta 
--so=fontfont/meta-2 --ma --in --expert

   texfont --afm2pl --en=texnansi --ve=fontfont --co=meta 
--so=fontfont/meta-1 --sl=* mtbk_*
   texfont --afm2pl --en=texnansi --ve=fontfont --co=meta 
--so=fontfont/meta-1 --sl=* mtbd_*

(afm2pl is an alternative for afm2tfm which avoids virtual fonts)

Texfont can also handle open type fonts (extension provided by apple users, 
who are the most demanding since they live in a font resource rich world). 
Also, texfont uses a name scheme that prevents conflicts with different 
slant versions and alike (--sl=.167, --sl=.2 are really different);

The whole idea is that one can just buy a font, run a script, and after 
telling tex how to use them (typescripts in context), can start using them. 
Bill McClain has a nice page about this:

   http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/context-help.html

And Adam Lindsay has written some MyWays (context users magazine) for it; 
will end up in the MAPS some day soon.

Hans