[tex-live] What do to with cm-super

[Karl Berry]

Hi Ralf,

Thanks *very* much for the test file and analysis.

    Unfortunately they are not compatible even for identical design size.

Yes, very unfortunate.

The original goal was to use LM where possible.  But given the metric
incompatibilities you've found, it seems that replacing EC/cm-super with
LM is not possible.  So \usepackage{lmodern} has to remain the way to
access LM from LaTeX for the foreseeable future.  Drat.

As an aside, it seems it would be nice, given today's world, if Latin
Modern was somehow adopted in core LaTeX as at least an "equal" choice
with the EC fonts -- though I admit I'm not sure what that means, and
anyway doesn't help us now.

    So by shipping t1c files, one can save about a factor of two in
    compressed size.

>From the choices you've admirably and clearly laid out, this is the one
that stands out to me.

Given the failure of replacing EC with LM, the remaining issue for TL is
the inst cd.  As a community, I really doubt we want to give up the cd
just yet -- every year the question is asked, and every year the members
say "we still have cd drives, please don't do only dvd".

Furthermore, from TL's perspective, it seems highly undesirable for the
inst cd and the live dvd to have "slightly" different contents.  I'd
rather leave off whole architectures from inst than change package
contents.  (Easier to implement too.)

So, I surmise that the thing to do (just restating what you wrote) is:
- include pfb2t1c and t1c2pfb in TL
- compress the t1's when making the zips for the inst cd
- uncompress the t1's when installing from inst

Yikes.  Maybe some other way of saving enough space will present
itself.

Anyway, time will tell.  Thanks again, very much, for looking at this.

Karl

P.S. A somewhat related question: can you easily adapt your test file to
compare LM and *CM*?  (I briefly tried and failed.)  I.e., are LM
outlines usable with CM metrics?  Knuth himself has said that various of
the improvements in LM are desirable ... just wondering, at this point.