In-reply-to: <9506301055.AA20199@r8.cs.man.ac.uk> from "David Carlisle" at Jun
 30, 95 11:55:38 am
Reply-to: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Message-id: <199506301239.PAA19689@karhu.Helsinki.FI>
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Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 15:39:54 +0300
From: Tomas Valter Vanhala <vanhala@CC.HELSINKI.FI>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject: Re: LaTeX's default fonts
 (Was: The proposed policy on distributing and [not] modifying files)
Status: R

>
> One solution would be to have a big push to get all/most sites to
> switch to sauter fonts but this is unlikely to happen (and on texs
> using type1 or true type fonts I am not sure they are even available?)
> In any case the effort would probably be better spent getting the TeX
> community to switch to the T1 encoding (How are the new  dc fonts
> coming along? :-)
>
> David
>
 
I would humbly suggest that this effort has better chances of success if
it is done at the moment when the `DC' math fonts become available,
since otherwise even sites that only use the LaTeX format will still
have to keep the CM fonts around for the greek mathematic characters. If
you suggest a move now, then all the North American TeX administrators
will revolt :-))
 
Seriously, changes that make existing dvi-files `rubbish' should not be
made too often. You could `sell' all of the DC fonts to people who only
write in English by showing them how much better the DC *math* fonts are
than the original CM ones, and by stating that there will not be another
font change for some time.
 
At the time the DC math fonts are made available you could perhaps also
consider abandoning the magstep scheme for font sizes, since DC fonts
can be generated at `any' size. Savings in disk space, which I believe
also was one of the original reasons for the magsteps, no longer happen
since in a typical TeX installation the generated pk-bitmaps end up in
different parts of the directory tree depending on the MF mode (e.g.
/usr/local/lib/texmf/fonts/tmp/pk/cx/ and
/usr/local/lib/texmf/fonts/tmp/pk/ljfour/).
 
Maybe you could then even make @xipt 11 points (instead of 10.95),
@xivpt 14 points (instead of 14.4) and so on ... :-)
 
Tomas
 
--
Tomas Vanhala                                 vanhala@kruuna.helsinki.fi
Tel. (90) 191 22097                     http://www.helsinki.fi/~vanhala/