X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2859" "Thu" "4" "November" "93" "09:57:56" "LCL" "Mike Piff" "M.Piff@SHEFFIELD.AC.UK" nil "56" "Re: Why I still use ofss" "^Date:" nil nil "11"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/24.6.93) id AA19046; Thu, 4 Nov 93 11:03:35 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/03.06.93) id AA26380; Thu, 4 Nov 93 11:03:32 +0100 Message-Id: <9311041003.AA26380@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3630; Thu, 04 Nov 93 11:02:22 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 2165; Thu, 04 Nov 93 11:02:18 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 2162; Thu, 04 Nov 93 11:02:14 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Thu, 4 Nov 93 09:57:56 LCL From: Mike Piff Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: Re: Why I still use ofss Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1087 %>From: Michael Barr %>Subject: Why I still use ofss %>I am neither the most sophisticated nor the least sophisticated %>user of latex (and by a wide margin in both directions, I would %>estimate). After a fair amount of effort, I finally figured out %>how the ofss works and made it work for me. I have added fonts %>(cmssbx that I use for real, complex, &c., eufm, rfsr), made %>up 14, 17 and 20 pt styles (and figured out how to get article.sty %>to load them) and made cmex fonts grow in size properly. All the %>recent and not so recent discussion of nfss leads me to believe %>that if I adopt it, I am back to ground 0. I have never used %>awk or sed and I would really rather avoid having to learn new %>languages. The ofss works fine for me and I see no reason to change. %>I suppose I will eventually have to adopt latex 3, but I will not %>be overjoyed at the prospect and I am still not sure what it is %>going to do for me. %> %>Michael Barr %> The maths school here has been using NFSS(1) for some time, in its old compatibility oldlfont.sty mode, without any problems and indeed without many being aware of the change! The patch I provided to make msam, eufm, etc available was seamlessly replaced by the equivalent from NFSS, and everone carried on using their LaTeX as normal. On one or two occasions I have used newlfont.sty myself for special jobs. Now Rainer and Frank have pointed out that everyone panicked unnecessarily, and the compatibility mode is still there. So we can all sleep more easily tonight. However, I see that I have a bit of work to do before I can release NFSS2 on my department. I shall have to check---shall I?---that any NFSS1 commands I have included in my style files have not been renamed in NFSS2, or perhaps a better way of doing things has been devised. (I never did understand the roundabout way those extra fonts were loaded in AMS-LaTeX.) It is one thing to correct one's own style files as problems arise, but another when perhaps 50 others are going to have problems the moment you change over. (This is just a very limited system. Imagine the problems when there might be thousands of users. I can at least afford to experiment! My colleagues in computing services can justifiably be more cautious.) Mike If fundamental changes have been made since NFSS1, %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Dr M J Piff %% e-mail: %% School of Mathematics and Statistics %% %% University of Sheffield %% M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk %% Hicks Building %% %% SHEFFIELD S3 7RH %% Telephone: (0742) 824431 %% England %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%