[tex-live] lambda, omega, latex.ini

[Petr Olsak]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, Hans Hagen wrote:

> At 10:25 12/05/2004, you wrote:
> >"HH" == Hans Hagen writes:
> >
> >  >> Being a TeX macro programmer, you want everything in the texinputs
> >  >> path, sure. :-)
> >
> >  HH> as macro programmer indeed, (i'm currently writing mostly
> >  HH> scripts, and then the tds tree and searching can be a pain); for
> >  HH> instance if fonts were in the texinputs path, then one could test
> >  HH> for the presence of tfm files adn write more robust font systems;
> >
> >Given that TeX can auto-generate missing TFM files (calling mktextfm
>
> i never use that, since it will not provide me tfm's for a newly bought
> font that i thought that i'd installed
>
> >on demand), the presence of the TFM files in TeX input paths would add
> >nothing more than extra confusion. It will not let you to find out if
> >a particular font is really present - it's absence may be "temporary"
> >and it may be generated on the fly.
>
> i only use permanently present fonts (i haven't used a metafont in years)

The LH fonts (support for cyrillic in many encodings, many sizes etc.)
are an example. The tfm's of LH fonts are autogenerated from MF sources
because the total number of tfm's of LH fonts is very big (many hunderds
or many thousands). This behavior is currently supported on texlive 2003.

Petr Olsak