Message-Id: <199401261020.AA28448@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 26 Jan 1994 10:17:08 GMT
From: Dean Ayres <dean.ayres@aea.orgn.uk>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Default fontencodings
Status: R

Frank Mittelbach writes:
 > Ther is *NO* right place to change the default encoding.
 >
 > To keep documents portable it is essential to start off with the same
 > encoding on every installation.

> it might look as if OT1/T1 are not so much of a problem. they are!
> and it becomes wose and worse if you think of encodings for other
> languages.

I accept what you say, but I don't like it! Ok encodings for non-english fonts
will cause havoc if made the default. But what about T1? My understanding
is that the cm fonts dont use OT1 consistently.
(eg the position occupied by a pound sign in some fonts is taken by a dollar
sign in other fonts. LaTeX has to play tricks to overcome this.

At the LaTeX user interface level, aren't the T1 encoded dc fonts supposed to
appear indistinguishable from the OT1 encoded cm fonts?
If they are, then what is the problem in changing the default? Problems will
arise if \char is used, but that's not part of LaTeX.
And LaTeX wont have to deal with the minor encoding differences in cm.

Small computer users may find it impossible to keep bitmaps for both the
DC fonts and the CM fonts.

Is anything being done to bring about the day when the DC fonts can be made
the standard for LaTeX?

Dean Ayres

PS My original question seems to have got lost in the discussion of default
encodings:

> How do you use preload.dtx to generate preload files
> such as cmpreloa.xii, dcpreloa.xpt etc?