FMi on text symbol encodings

[Lars Hellström]

On the LATEX-L list yesterday, Frank Mittelbach
<frank.mittelbach@UNI-MAINZ.DE> mensioned something about text symbol
encodings which I think is relevant for fontinst, so I have forwarded it
here:

>In particular it works not very well in the current situation where the TS1 is
>effectively ony correctly implemented in CM fonts while all the PS fonts
>contain huge gaps in the encodings that claim to be TS1.
>
>BUT ... in my opinion there error here lies in calling those font encodings
>TS1. My approach would be to distangle TS1 into several sub-encodings, eg
>
> TSA = Text Symbol Adobe basics
> TSX = Text Symbol Adobe basics + expert
> TS1 = Text Symbol as defined by Joerg
>
>with those encodings being TSA < TSX < TS1
>
>and a change in textcomp to allow loading a subset
>
>This needs some further thoughts i'm sure but the current situation is not
>good where the problem appears only at the printing stage (and it does violate
>the invariant of the encoding, ie that 2 fonts in the same encoding produce
>the same glyph set)

The current average behaviour of fontinst (or perhaps rather of
\latinfamily, but that's not important)---to make "TS1 encoded" fonts which
contain a substansial amount of Unfakable \specials---isn't very friendly.
Perhaps it should rather be to make TSX or TSA encoded fonts, depending on
what fonts are found.

This isn't a question of particularly current interest however, so we may
well leave things as they are, for now.

Lars Hellström