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Re: Font naming rears its ugly head again



Don Hosek writes:
 
>-DVI files tend not to be distributed except under controlled
>circumstances. Far more common is the distribution of TeX input
>files or printer output files (e.g. PostScript). Therefore, the
>point is moot.
 
I only wish this were true!  Our department swaps dvi files by anonymous 
ftp all over the place---I know about this because I'm the one they 
complain to when things go wrong!  I try to encourage people to send 
PostScript instead, but to no avail...
 
>-Because of the above point, rather than a generic naming system,
>a mapping of the TeX font name to a generic description might be
>more useful. 
 
In the long term, I think we need to come up with some standard system 
like this.  Even something as simple as an agreement between TeX 
implementors as to a standard character to use as a directory separator 
would do---then I would know that the font:
 
   fontinst.adobe.times.roman.medium.cork
   
would be:
 
   fontinst/adobe/times/roman/medium/cork  on UNIX
   fontinst:adobe:times:roman:medium:cork  on Macintosh
   fontinst\adobe\times\roman\medium\cork  on MS-DOS
   
etc.  But such a system really needs to be inside TeX in order to be 
transparent to the end user.
 
>-VF files probably should be part of the exchange when DVI files
>are exchanged.
 
I'm lucky if I can persuade some of the users here to remove the read 
protection from their DVI files when they ask other people to read them!  
The only way I'll persuade anyone here to use fonts other than CM is if 
their use is completely transparent.  And this means that they'll carry 
on swapping dvi files around.  I'd just like to make sure that when they 
do this, and some fonts are missing, that they get a `font missing' 
error rather than an incomprehensible checksum error.
 
Alan.