[tex-live] interfering tfms

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2018-01-24 at 13:22:12 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:

 > I agree with Karl that tgothic package should change the font
 > names, which is far easier than changing a range of several TeX
 > engines and support document.

LaTeX users usually include a macro package in order to select a font.
In this case the actual names of .tfm files can be changed at any time
if the macro packages are adapted accordingly.

The problem is plain TeX.  TeX's \font primitive expects basenames
of .tfm file as arguments, for instance

  \font cmr10

loads cmr10.tfm .

Renamed TFM files break existing documents.

There is no simple solution.  If the names of the Japanese .tfm files
are changed, it might be possible to re-define the \font primitive in
p[la]tex format files in order to preserve backwards compatibility.

What I can imagine is that the p[la]tex format files contain lookup
tables which map "tgoth10[.tfm]" to "ptex_tgoth10[.tfm]", for
instance.  This is probably a reasonable approach if not too many
fonts are concerned.

Since TeX is not the most comfortable programming language, I'm aware
that all this is easier said than done.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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