[tex-live] Conflits in gsfonts packge and tex-live distro

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Fri May 22 02:35:04 CEST 2009


On 21 May 2009 James Cloos wrote:

 > >>>>> "Reinhard" == Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:
 > 
 > Reinhard> But as I said before, there should never be two fonts with the
 > Reinhard> same FontName.
 > 
 > They are not different fonts, they are different versions of the same
 > font.  The two concepts are not the same and should not be confused.
 
But you can't deny that they are different.  It's a technical problem.
PostScript interpreters assume that two font files are identical if
they have the same FontName.  PostScript interpreters are not aware of
version numbers and file names, they don't read READMEs and are not
subscribed to mailing lists.  They entirely rely on FontName.  You
definitely run into problems if you are using two different font files
with the same FontName.  Technically, it doesn't matter whether they
are "different versions of the same font" or two "different fonts".
This is a philosophical question.

 > The fonts were released for Ghostscript;

They had been released much earlier by URW before they had been
released under GPL.

 > they certainly have the right to release new versions of the fonts.

Yes, the fonts are under GPL.  But I'm not talking about legal stuff.

 > Concerns about whether the hints were properly preserved are
 > reasonable, but complaints that the company responsible for making
 > the fonts available in the first place accepted new glyphs and
 > released a new version are not.

I'm not complaining about the new glyphs.  But I think that they had
not been included properly (according to the Type1 specs).

However, everything in TeX Live is correct.  Walter created all the
TeX support files for the original URW fonts and maintains the
original URW fonts in his package too.  This is great and I don't
expect anything else.

There is nothing wrong with with the fonts Walter maintains and there
is nothing wrong with TeX Live.  Period!

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


More information about the tex-live mailing list