Fonts Help

[Peter Flynn]

On 07/08/2020 16:13, Philip Taylor wrote:
> Peter is well aware that I will disagree with this statement, and I do.  

:-)

> If you want to be in control, and to understand everything that is going 
> on, but are willing to restrict yourself to fonts that have been 
> designed for, or converted for use with, Knuthian TeX, then use Plain 
> TeX.  If you want to be in control, and to understand everything that is 
> going on, and if you want to be able to use fonts in Truetype (TTF), 
> Opentype (OTF) formats and so on, then use Plain XeTeX.  

I can't disagree with that at all.

My disagreement is only with the premise that this is what all users 
want (what all users *need* is a different question). If you need to 
know the fine details (or you're just inquisitive) this is indeed 
exactly what you want.

> If you are happy to use others' work, then use XeLaTeX, but you will
> have to accept that as a result you will probably (a) /never/ fully
> understand what is going on "under the bonnet",
You redeem yourself, Phil :-) THIS is what most users want.

> and (b) you may find it difficult (if not impossible) to coerce
> XeLaTeX into doing exactly what you want.
I've never actually had that problem, but I only deal with a subset of 
document types, mainly books, periodicals, and tech doc. Phil probably 
deals with a much wider set of material.

Peter