[XeTeX] FontSite 500 fonts and XeTeX

[R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar]

William Adams wrote:

> They're also no-name knock-offs for the most part and I've found that  
> they have kerning and spacing issues and problems w/ encodings (esp.  
> accents).

Before I purchased the FontSite 500 CD, I asked <orders at fontsite.com> several 
questions, the fourth of which was:

"4. Are the fonts from different foundries or are they all from a single foundry?"

to which they replied

"The fonts are licensed from URW."

I am no font expert, but know that URW are a reputable foundry or vendor. I took 
the above reply to be sufficient to guarantee the good quality of the fonts.

I had assumed that the prefix URW in the font name and the copyright laws would 
ensure that the font is not a cheap imitation. Your reply leads me to think 
otherwise. Therefore, I looked at the URW Grotesk Regular file with otfinfo so:

otfinfo -i URWGRG__.ttf

and got
-------------
Family:              URW Grotesk
Subfamily:           Regular
Full name:           URW Grotesk
PostScript name:     URWGrotesk
Preferred family:    URW Grotesk
Preferred subfamily: Regular
Mac font menu name:  URW Grotesk
Version:             Version 1.50
Unique ID:           FontSite URW Grotesk
Description:         © 2002 The FontSite. All rights reserved. www.fontsite.com
Designer URL:        http://www.fontsite.com
Manufacturer:        The FontSite
Vendor URL:          http://www.fontsite.com
Copyright:           © 2002 The FontSite. All rights reserved. www.fontsite.com
License URL:         mailto:info at fontsite.com
-------------
So, perhaps, this font too is a "no-name knock-off" as you have suggested.

> There're lots of better typefaces w/ clear provenance and imprimatur  
> --- better to use something which actually benefits the people who  
> created the original designs.

I have the Adobe TypeClassics CD, which I believe is of "good provenance". I 
thought that the FontSite CD, being a compilation "licensed from URW", was in 
the same league. I was not aware that the original designers were being hard 
done by in the latter case.

As for good quality fonts, I am aware of the TeX Gyre project. Adam, if you 
could give me some links (off-list if appropriate) to other good quality fonts, 
I would be grateful for that information. I am interested primarily in book 
typesetting with English script, and for mathematics.

Jonathan Kew wrote:

> in the  
> TeX world, the alphabet soup of .tfm, .vf, .fd, .enc, .map, etc.  
> provides a mechanism that could be used.

The FontSite 500 CD provides both TrueType and Type 1 versions of the fonts. It 
appears that using the Type 1 fonts and Christopher League's scripts (see)

http://contrapunctus.net/league/haques/fs500tex/

and following Jonathan's suggestion above to integrate the fonts in the 
TeX/LaTeX system is preferable to grappling with the non-Unicoded TTF fonts and 
XeLaTeX because of the fundamental mismatch between the two.

Thanks to everyone who responded and for the useful links.

Chandra
13 Oct 07