Message-Id: <9311151450.AA29366@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Mon, 15 Nov 93 14:47:49 GMT
From: Dean Ayres <dean.ayres@AEA.ORGN.UK>
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:      Re: times.sty
Status: R


Sebastian Rahtz says;

>
>There is an underlying, false, assumption in all this furore over
>times.sty vs nftimes.sty vs times3.sty; this is that we know to put in
>a `times.sty'. the current nftimes.sty, for instance, changes the
>romans, sans and tt families. it might changes just the roman; or just
>the roman and tt; or it might load Times as the maths text font, like
>the ill-fated timesmat.sty.

The situation is worse than this. Unfortunately some people use
\LaTeX{} to produce documents that must comply with highly
ill-conceived document formats. For instance, I know one example of a
style which mandates that the document is typeset entirely in
Helvetica. Should the helvetica font be set up as \rm or \sf?

Another document format I use mandates Bembo as a Roman font, and
Frutiger as a Sans-Serif font. Unfortunately the NFSS2 style file
nfbembo.sty uses Optima as the Sans-Serif font.

Thus there is a degree of arbitrarity (sic) in any `standard' style
file which loads a font. Thus I am not convinced that we can expect the
majority of people to use standard font style options, as they will not
meet their needs. Instead we should make the font customisation process as
easy to use as possible, and let people customise at will.

I used to argue for the dropping of the `nf' prefix', but now I
believe that the best solution is to leave it in. This allows for the
provision of a number of truly standard styles which can be used in a
site-independent manner. It also frees up names like `times' and (in
my case) `bembo' which can be redefined by local administrators to
preserve backwards capability or to tailor the particular combinations
of fonts loaded. In order that a document be portable, it should use a
standard style option, or Computer Modern.

At the moment, it is quite difficult to reconfigure the font setup
files. I think that in order for my suggestion to work there needs to
be some on-line (i.e. free) documentation that explains how anyone can
write a times.sty file without detailed knowledge of the \LaTeXe
innards.

Dean Ayres	<dean.ayres@aea.orgn.uk>
AEA Technology, UK