[tex-live] Using LM instead of CM

[Hans Hagen]

Karl Berry wrote:
>     the bar in \hbar is uncomfortably
>     close to the top serif of the 'h'. 
>
> I forwarded that to Jacko & Janusz.  Thanks.
>
>     the too high dieresis in CM has been known for a long time, which is
>     why german.sty and its descendants contain code to lower it.
>
> Too bad.  I can't imagine any way the macros can know whether LM or CM
> outlines are being used, since cmr10.tfm is being used in both cases.
> And it would be a step backward to continue the too-high dieresis in LM.
> Given this, it seems we cannot replace CM with LM.
>   
for a while there have been composed characters with lowered umlauts in 
the lm beta fonts (actually, context even supported that -) but for some 
reason those variants have been removed (maybe because no one was using 
them); there are some alternatives in lm (.alt, .prep, .oldstyle, .dup 
.ts1, .. e.g. there is an alternative $ as well: dollar.os); i suppose 
that reintroducing the e|o|i|u umlauts again in lm is not that complex, 
but even then, one will need to make an associated set of encoding files 
(context ships with a few) as well as enable the fonts etc etc

(btw, lowering the umlauts 'manually' will break hyphenation; also, 
maybe germans want their umlauts low, that is not to say that other 
countries/languages want them low as well)

>     There is a further problem that the hinting of the LM fonts is rather
>     strange at the moment
>
> I reported that to J&J too.
>   
Hans 

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