Message-Id: <199402022207.AA29168@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 2 Feb 1994 22:06:00 +0000
From: Paul Taylor <pt@DOC.IC.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      "No file Ueuf.fd"
Status: R

Every LaTeX user knows that the message
      No file paper.aux
is unimportant - it will be followed by "there are unresolved references"
and later go away.

The message
        No file Ueuf.fd
is more serious.  It actually means that a lot of formulae will come out
as garbage. But LaTeX2e passes over this error as if it didn't matter.
(Yes, I know that this happenned because I'd forgotten to add nfss2 to
my TEXINPUTS, but that's not the point.)

I suggest that \try@load@fontshape should
(1) try another encoding, maybe U
(2) make up the \DeclareFontShape command according to some standard
    encoding, such as simply cmrbxit10 for bold italic.

Then at least the error will show up when the TFM file is not found,
so that it's apparent that something to do with fonts is missing.

"the user will get a TeX error message"

So what's wrong with that? After each \font command you can test whether
what you've got is \nullfont and substitute something else,
and give a more informative LaTeX message.

Paul


PS Frank, rest assured, we are VERY grateful for LaTeX2e.

I fully appreciate that it drives you nuts, with long days of work and lots
of complaints.  But I'd like to point out that the previous situation,
with at least two versions of LaTeX in circulation, was driving a lot
of other people nuts.

I, like a number of people on this list, am supposed to be doing academic
research, and got involved in this kind of thing because I was stupid
enough to let other people know that I knew how to drive TeX (not to
mention the C compiler).

Incompatibility wastes the time of a LOT of people,
not just that of the author of the software.

However, whereas public discussion (of which you have to take the brunt)
leads to some effect on the standard version, the time local TeX wizzards
spend goes straight down the drain.  If all we wanted was "to make TeX
do such and such" we could get in there and do it for ourselves.
It is because we look after other users (in many cases with no
renumeration and, like you, getting only abuse in return),
and have some respect for a common standard and the people who
are maintaining it that we get involved in this discussion.