Message-Id: <199403231430.AA20632@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 23 Mar 1994 15:29:00 +0100
From: Frank Poppe <POPPE@SWOV.NL>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      LaTeX2e and PostScript
Status: R

Hello,

Because I had some difficulties installing the PostScript fonts under
LaTeX2e I have had a closer look at the naming conventions of the fonts.
I have been wondering about the difference between "slanted" and
"italic".

When I look at the 35 `standard' fonts available at most PS printers the
serif families have an *italic* variant, while the sans-serif families
(and Courier) have an *oblique* variant.

It seems to me that the italic variant should be mapped to the italic
shape in the NFSS scheme, while the oblique variants should be mapped to
the slanted shape. In the PSNFSS package this is the case now, except
for Courier-Oblique and  -BoldOblique, which are mapped to pcr/m/it and
pcr/b/it (this should be pcr/m/sl and pcr/b/sl in my opinion).

But in _The LaTeX Companion_ both italic and oblique are said to
represent the italic shape. See table 11.6 on page 333. It seems to me
that all entries for the sans-serif families should have "n, sl" in the
"shape" column.

For the sans-serif families there is no other option for the ..././it
fonts to be substituted by the respective ..././sl fonts.

For the serif families the ..././sl fonts can be either substituted by
the ..././it fonts, or by a slanted version of the ..././n fonts. For
times-roman e.g., my distribution (I suppose it came with DVIPS but I'm
not sure) contains a ptmro.tfm and ptmro.vf, while the rptmro entry in
PSFONTS.MAP refers to: Times-Roman ".167 SlantFont"

I wonder if these tfm- and vf-files have been made for other PS fonts?

Finally I wondered about the Helvetiva-Narrow fonts. The PSNFSS package
does not use them. I have added entries in the FD file for phv/c/n,
etc., and this works well.

My PSFONTS.MAP already had entries for rphvrrn, etc, but these referred
to Helvetica ".82 extendfont".

Changing this to "Helvetica-Narrow", etc. works, but a look (with
VFTOVP) at my phvrrn.tmf and .vf shows that these were made from the
condensed Helvetica, not from Helvetica-Narrow fonts. I don't suppose
this is exactly the same? Did anybody make TFM and VF files for the
"real" Helvetica-Narrow fonts?

Thanks for any feed-back,

_____________________________________________________________________________
 Frank Poppe             <poppe@swov.nl>                tel:   +31 70 3209323
 Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV                fax:   +31 70 3201261
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