[XeTeX] two questions

[Mojca Miklavec]

(This should be posted to the ConTeXt mailing list, not to this one,
but well ...)

On 11/7/07, Peter Dyballa wrote:
> Am 07.11.2007 um 09:48 schrieb Mojca Miklavec:
>
> > should one assume that LM fonts are installed on the system
> > or should the old type 1 texnansi fonts be used? (I find supporting
> > that a bit tricky.) One can of course also assume that the user won't
> > ever use LM in that case.
>
> These fonts in otf.dfont format, ready to be installed in /Library/
> Fonts, or somewhere else outside Mac OS X as pure OTF, are around 4
> MB in size, as pure OTF around 1 MB. The waste is much less than
> their use. Particularly when compared to CM Super and other
> PostScript Type 1 implementations. Their installation should be
> recommended.

Well, I don't use LM anywhere outside TeX, so "recommended" only
applies to xdv2pdf in that case, or am I missing something?  The
question is not so much the size itself, but more the concern that if
one requires installing Open Type LM, ConTeXt won't work
"out-of-the-box" any more.

> Fontspec has the cm-default option. Could this also be implemented
> for ConTeXt? Then an user who does not want to use LM can live with CM.

ConTeXt got rid of CM long ago.

But more important: in ConTeXt one should not need to load 10 packages
before being able to use some sensible defaults, and for ConTeXt,
Unicode LM *should* remain a sensible default.

The default could still be "fallback to LM texnansi-lmr12 & company"
if needed (one could do something like "if there is a font
[lmodern12-roman] present, use those definitions, else try if
LMRoman12-Regular is present, and use a bunch of definitions suitable
for that, and, if even that is not present, use texnansi-lmr12 as the
last resort - the user will probably replace them anyway), but my main
question remains: in what aspects is xdv2pdf still better than
xdvipdfmx, so that supporting it with some not-so-nice tricks & hacks
would pay off for those two users who will know about that option?

The most important question is of course: ConTeXt could provide a
workaround and support for xdv2pdf if that font bug isn't going to be
resolved in some reasonable time, but I hope that that won't be the
case. (XeTeX support in ConTeXt has been broken for more than half a
year, so waiting for some more time is probably OK.)

In the meantime, if one wants to use xdv2pdf, it's enough to comment
out these lines in type-otf.tex:
    \definefontsynonym
[LMRoman5-Regular][file:lmroman5-regular][features=default]
to remove the xdvipdfmx option in tex.rb and to remake the formats.

(So for Dalyoung: the only additional step to make is to delete or
comment out the lines above if you want to use xdv2pdf before the
xdvipdfmx will work again. Of course, you need to install LM fonts
first.)

Mojca