MetaType1 in TeX Live

[Reinhard Kotucha]

I've added Jacko to the CC.

On 2019-06-02 at 15:37:19 -0600, Karl Berry wrote:

 >     Is there any particular reason for this packaging?
 >
 > As far as I know, it's written as DOS batch scripts and thus does
 > not support any other platform. So I never unpacked it.

I already used MetaType1 version 0.48 on Linux in 2008.

According to the svn log, you uploaded version 0.56 in 2015.  I don't
think that much had been changed since 2008.

The batch files are not needed on Unix but I must admit that I wrote a
little shell script:

 | #!/bin/sh
 |
 | FONT=mpmarkers
 | MT1DIR=./mt1
 |
 | mpost "\generating:=0; \input $FONT.mp" &&
 | gawk -f $MT1DIR/mp2pf.awk -vCD=./pfcommon.dat -vNAME=$FONT &&
 | gawk -f $MT1DIR/packsubr.awk -vVERBOSE=1 -vLEV=5 -vOUP=$FONT.pn $FONT.p &&
 | t1asm -b $FONT.pn $FONT.pfb &&
 | mpost "\generating:=1; \input $FONT.mp"

If MetaType1 is supposed to work out of the box in TeX Live on all
platforms we need an awk binary for Windows.  ATM it's easier to use
on Unix.  The awk scripts are not portable and have to be adapted
manually.  I have:

 | BEGIN {
 | # HEAD
 |  CONSOLE="/dev/tty"
 | # for MS-DOS you may use:
 | #  CONSOLE="CON"

No idea why printing to stdout isn't sufficient.

Karl, before you invest any time, let's consult Jacko.  The version we
have in TeX Live only creates Type 1 fonts but Jacko nowadays creates
OpenType.  Thus I fear that what we have in TeX Live isn't up to date.

On the other hand I fear that Jacko's current workflow has too many
dependencies on external software which makes it difficult to be
included in TeX Live.

If we really want to add a MetaType1 package to TeX Live which works
out of the box, we have to do a few things.  If awk doesn't know on
which system it's running, we need two versions of the scripts and a
texlua wrapper similar to "rungs" for Ghostscript.  And as I proved in
tlgs (Ghostscript for Windows) already, all MS-DOG batch files can be
replaced easily by texlua scripts which work on all platforms.

Jacko, what do you think?  Does it make sense to support the old
version one way or another or should we wait for something newer?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                            Phone: +49-511-3373112
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