It made it possible to just download all 2229 AFM files from Adobe's FTP site and run AFMtoTFM on them (11 minutes total - more than three font metric files per second!) without having to rename files and make up names for fonts which don't yet have a Karl Berry assigned name. And Adobe made sure, of course, that none of the font file names conflicted with other Adobe font file names.
It makes it possible to get all 228 characters in normal text fonts without need for `text companion' fonts, virtual fonts or other such complexity. A single TFM file complete with ligatures and kerning does the job. See ly1.htm for additional discussion.