[XeTeX] fontspec: newfontinstance vs family vs face

[Will Robertson]

Hello,

A little while ago Jonathan Kew suggested:
> I wonder whether it would make sense for fontspec to provide a
> version of \newfontinstance that only defines the specific font you
> ask for, rather than attempting to find and set up the four
> 'standard' style variants.
>
> In fact, \newfontinstance sounds to me like a good name for such a
> thing, and the current \newfontinstance could be named
> \newfontfamily. But maybe it's too late to reconsider the name of an
> existing command, and instead you could have \newfontface to define a
> single face rather than a family?

Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter?
It's trivial to add to the code but I don't want to add more  
complexity to the interface than absolutely necessary. fontspec.pdf  
is long enough already!

This will mean
   \newfontface\myfont[ ...font features... ]{ font }
is equivalent to
   \newfontfamily\myfont[ UprightFeatures={...font features...} ] 
{ font }
with the additional "feature" that bold/italic fonts are looked for  
use in regular LaTeX font switching in the latter.

Alternatively, would it simply be better to include the features
   \newfontinstance\myfont[ NoBold, NoItalic ]{ font }
or is this still too verbose for people's liking?

I guess this solution's still confusing in the case of
   \newfontinstance\myfont[NoItalic]{Hoefler Text Italic}

I very slightly lean towards the \newfontface idea, but I'm scared of  
adding more commands that do essentially the same thing as other ones...

Will
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