Message-Id: <9311041746.AA27892@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Thu, 4 Nov 93 18:19:23 +0100
From: Uwe Muench <muench@PH-CIP.UNI-KOELN.DE>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      latex2e, nfss2 and internal font selection commands
Status: R


Hallo!

Rainer Schoepf explained:
 > Just to make this clear: LaTeX2e will deal with this problem in a
 > rather simple manner: if the document uses \documentstyle, the system
 > will fall back to LaTeX2.09 compatibility mode. The only thing that
 > will not work are style files which use internal font selection
 > commands of the old lfonts.tex, like \tenrm.

Our users often use pictex.tex and the pictex-exports of the program 'xfig'.
The pictex.tex-macro only uses the internal font selection command \fiverm,
but 'xfig' exports code, which contains many commands as \tenrm, \sevenrm,
etc (mostly of no need, but it does). I see, that it is possible to write
such things as
\newcommand{\fiverm}{\fontfamily{cmr}\fontseries{m}\fontshape{n}%
\fontsize{5}{7}\selectfont}
in pictex.tex (though there should be no changes in the original file),
but I do not know, how to change 'xfig', so that it does not export
these internal font selection commands. So I would have to provide
a style-file, which defines these commands (in the way like in the exmple
above) or dump them in the format-file. But as I understand, the latter
is not a possibility, when all formats of latex2e should be the same (we
want to decrease the number of different formats, don't we?).

Frank explained, that the internal commands are different at various sites, so
it is understandable, that latex2e will not support them.
So the question remains: What is the recommended way to get rid of such
internal commands, when they are produced by some software (or: who updates
the styles (such as pictex.tex) to be nfss2-compatible). Global definiton or
style-files do not seem to be a good solution, do they?

What do you think about this problem? I think in the compability-mode
latex2e will not be fully compatible with latex209 :-). So I fear that
some people will not upgrade to latex2e because of this. I hope I am
wrong. Maybe, when a good solution is provided.

Ciao,
           Uwe

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uwe M\"unch, Schmittgasse 92, D-51143 K\"oln, email: muench@ph-cip.uni-koeln.de
im Moment : Universit\"at zu K\"oln (Physikal.Institut) / cip-lab
 "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
 relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman