Message-Id: <9311152008.AA00529@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Mon, 15 Nov 93 21:07:40 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.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:      setting up fonts (decision on names)
Status: R


> 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?

it should probably set up as \rm (and \sf). however such a style
should do it directly if it is the layout requirement not by hoping
that the user adds helvet or whatever to the option list.

> 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.

again, i don't see your problem, if you need such a style then it only
needs two or three lines (like nfbembo) to set it up. All these styles
like times etc are only suggestions for the user if a general standard
document class file is used. if you producing a tailored layout for
some type of publication you don't want the user to mess with your
font setup anyway.

> 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.

it should be easy enough since

\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{ptm}  % set up times for \rm

and two more lines for whatever you want as \sf and \tt basically do
the job.

> of fonts loaded. In order that a document be portable, it should use a
> standard style option, or Computer Modern.

the question here is what you mean by portable. you you just mean
processable to produce output without errors, it is definitely
indepent of the fonts used. If you mean by portable truely the same on
both ends then you better declare the internal/external font
correspondence inside the document completely. LaTeX was never fully
font compatible in this respect, not even with computer modern
(however it was possible to produce a document on an amr
installation). I don't expect that this will be better with the whole
world of fonts at your command now. How can you prevent that somebody
at the installation changed a standard or non-standard .fd file?


> At the moment, it is quite difficult to reconfigure the font setup
> files.

if you talk about NFSS than i don't think so

> 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.

It will be all in the Companion, and it is also (but not in that
detail) in the NFSS documentation; but can you tell me why it needs to
be free?

In case you don't know, half of the royalties of The Companion go
directly to the LaTeX3 project where they are used to pay other
peoples travel expences or hotel bills, if the come to work with me in
Mainz.

Believe me, even if you pay for the book you will never be able to pay
back the time and effort spent on NFSS/LaTeX2e+LaTeX3

----------------------

to finish the discussion on prefix/postfix nofix: I've decided to
revert to the original names, ie to times, helvet ...

There are points in favor of both and I'm sure that any decision will
make somebody happy and somebody else unhappy. But one decision was
necessary and the above was it. (By the way, the last two chapters of
the Companion are since midnight sunday with the final proof reader)

you might be interested about the result of the poll:

 keep       22
 scratch    63
 don't care 39
 invalid     9    (8 don't care one keep inside the body not the subject line)

i noticed that even most site maintainers are for scratch or don't
care. thanks for sending your vote in although it is a bit depressing
that we (just like in politics only reached a bit more than half of
the reader of the list).

cheers
Frank