[tex-live] missing Adobe AFM files?

Frank Küster frank at kuesterei.ch
Wed Oct 11 13:32:20 CEST 2006


Frank Küster <frank at kuesterei.ch> wrote:

> But indeed I should probably bring that up now, and not one week before
> TeXlive is going to be released...  I send Walter a copy of this mail.
> Walter, can you please tell us whether you will have time to look into
> this?  

Okay, let's just do it.  Walter can always comment if something's wrong
with the details of our analysis.  So here's the mail that I have
prepared.  As it turns out, I've also written something about Werner's
request, the addition of afm files, at the very end.  Probably
pro-adding them, all in all.


Hi all,

as already pointed out previously[1], there is some confusion about
files in TeXlive that are required (or not) to use the base Postscript
fonts with psnfss.  There are files in TeXlive that are not on CTAN at
all, and some are in directories not related to PSNFSS.

In the last weeks, we (Ralf Stubner and I) have tried to get an overview
of the situation, which I am going to present here.

We also propose a solution in terms of some tpm reorganization (or
rather, a couple of alternatives).  However, we did not understand all
arguments made in the previous thread, so please take this as a
suggestion made under the assumption that no other constraints exist
(like existing infrastructure, information we have missed etc.).  It may
turn out that what is finally implemented must differ considerably from
this proposal.  But we are sure that some things will have to be
changed, and this might be an opportunity to start the discussion.


The files that we deal with are currently in the tpms for

   "avantgar", "bookman", "charter", "courier", "helvetic", "ncntrsbk",
   "palatino", "symbol", "times", "zapfchan", "zapfding"

There are 1656 files all in all.  These can be gathered into the
following seven groups.  For reference, the script used to filter this
is available at [2], and the files indicated for each category can be
obtained at [3]

1. Files required for psnfss, as described in psnfss' 00readme.txt:

   599 files, psnfss-required.txt, plus one file from lw35nfss.zip that
              is missing in texlive (pzcmi8r.tfm)

2. Files that used to be required (or at least useful) for psnfss, but
   have been removed from CTAN and not yet from TeXLive:

   149 files, psnfss-lw35obs.txt and psnfss-urwrenamed.txt

3. Files for direct access to the URW fonts without PSNFSS ("urw35vf"),
   no longer on CTAN because Walter Schmidt recommends to not do this

   544 files, psnfss-urwdirect.txt

4. Fonts that need other macro packages than PSNFSS to be accessed

   284 files, psnfss-csps.txt, psnfss-pclnfss.txt, psnfss-pslatex.txt, psnfss-ly1.txt

5. Metrics for fonts that are not available on CTAN, or with only
   non-free Type1 files

   45 files, psnfss-phvl.txt and psnfss-ibm.txt

6. Source files for psnfss metrics, not useful for document processing

   29 files, psnfss-psnfss-source.txt

7. Metrics about which we could not find out anything

   5 files, psnfss-nocategory.txt


So what should we do, which changes are desirable?  Here are some
guidelines: 

- In order to facilitate updating from CTAN, files from one directory or
  subtree should end up in the same tpm.  Probably it would also be good
  if one tpm does not contain files from too many directories, but we
  don't know whether this has really any effect

- As PSNFSS maintainer, Walter Schmidt once said he does not want to get
  into a situation were support for obsolete fonts or ways to access
  fonts is expected from him (if I understood correctly).  Therefore,
  such files should not be in the tpms required for PSNFSS, but in tpms
  marked as obsolete, if at all.

Assuming no constraints from existing infrastructure, this would result
in the following changes:

a) The files from categories 2 and 3 above are removed from TeXlive, or
   at least moved to a separate tpm (URW-direct-obsolete.tpm).

   We do not expect that this breaks any existing documents - other
   distributions like teTeX and MikTeX do not have these files
   currently, and no incompatibilities are known.  In a mail
   following[1], Karl Berry has used urw35vf as an example against too
   intrusive changes, but I did not really understand the point.  In
   case you (Karl) or anybody else knows a place where these virtual
   fonts are actually used, we would have to reconsider this.  But in
   any case we strongly favor separating them from the default PSNFSS
   install. 

b) The source files from category 6 above are either removed, or else
   installed below texmf/source/fonts.

c) The metric files (whose licenses are non-free or unclear) which don't
   have corresponding (free) fonts on CTAN should be removed.  Among
   these 50 files, only 6 are non-free fonts available on CTAN (the
   recently discussed mis-named "Adobe" Courier fonts which are in fact
   from IBM), the others have no corresponding fonts at all on CTAN.  We
   are also not aware of any macro package for accessing the Courier
   font, and therefore do not expect any breakage.

d) The fonts that need other macro packages for access (category 4)
   should probably be moved to the respective packages.  This means that
   they will be installed with the files that are in the same
   directories on CTAN.  For example,

   115 tfm/vf files from CTAN://macros/latex/contrib/pclnfss would be
       moved to pclnfss.tpm; they are only useful for people who own a
       PCL printer and/or use an appropriate PCL viewer, and who use the
       pclnfss LaTeX style files.  Moreover, pclnfss provides more fonts
       than just the Base PostScript fonts, and we thing all should be
       treated the same way.  Together with the existing pclnfss they
       stay in collection-fontsextra.

   147 tfm/vf files from cspsfonts.tar.gz which are accessed through
       CSTeX, csLaTeX or czech/slovak.sty, and not useful for documents
       that do not use any of these macro packages.  They should be
       either moved to the existing cs.tpm (Metafont fonts) or a new one
       with appropriate dependencies.

    20 tfm files from psnfssx could be moved to psnfssx.tpm where the
       corresponding fd/sty files reside.

     2 afm files from macros/latex/contrib/pslatex, which can be moved
     to pslatex.tpm

e) This leaves us with only the files from category 1 in the PSNFSS
   realm.  On CTAN, these are at three different locations.  They
   include: 

   - All files from fonts/urw/base35/
   - All pfb files from fonts/charter (afm files are not installed)
   - All files from freenfss.zip and lw35nfss.zip in
     macros/latex/required/psnfss/ 

   There are a couple of possibilities to group them into tpm files.

   1. Keep things as they are: <fontname>.tpm contains all files from
      fonts/urw/base35/<fontname>/ plus the corresponding metric files
      from freenfss.zip or lw35nfss.zip

   2. Per-font tpms as above, but metric files from freenfss.zip or
      lw35nfss.zip are put into psnfss.tpm to reflect their origin

   3. One tpm for the complete fonts/urw/base35 directory, metric files
      in psnfss.tpm as in 2.


   We assume that from the point of view of easy updating, putting the
   metric files into the tpm that corresponds to their upstream origin
   is desirable.  This would be an argument in favor of 2 or 3.  With
   option 2, however, the tpm files would become very small (26 files
   for Helvetica, 12 for Avantgarde, Bookman, Courier, NewCent, Palatino
   and Times, 3 or 4 for the rest).

   One related issue that should be decided is whether afm files should
   be installed.  If I'm not mistaken, each TeXlive tpm also installs
   its source files.  Since afm files are usually source files, this
   means they should be installed in TeXlive, even if the location is
   not TEXMF/source, but TEXMF/fonts/afm.  But then we should be
   consistent and install all of them, e.g. add the missing ones for
   Charter. 

Thank you for considering, Frank



[1] http://tug.org/mailman/htdig/tex-live/2006-May/010058.html
[2] http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-tex/tetex-base/trunk/debian/searchbase35?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
[3] http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-tex/texlive/trunk/LocalTPM/?rev=0&sc=0


-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)


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