Re: fontmapping files

[Thomas B. Ridgeway <ridgeway@blackbox.hacc.washington.edu>]

regarding substituting for missing fonts by using
a fontmapping scheme, Don Hosek ( > ) comments on
my (comment ( > /):
> / For instance, on my XYZ9000 at home, I will 
> /presumably modify my fontmap file to say
> /-> adobe-times-roman  cmr10
> /-> bitstream-charter  cmr10
> /-> otherwise-velveeta cmss10
> /-> amr10              cmr10
> /(since my FX-80 ink-ribbon typesetter has a limited selection of fonts)
> /and locally implement a take-whatever-is-available-and-use-it scheme
> /without necessitating wildcards in the documents I bring home to TeX,
> /or even my editing the font calls in the documents I bring home.
> 
> Your application of font substitution seems very awkward to me.
> Presumably you'll want to get a rather complete proofing of the
> document to be printed, you'd probably want to keep the metrics
> for the font being proofed and live with awkward inter-letter
> spacing on your FX-80. If nothing else, don't you want a good
> idea of how many pages the document will have?
> 
   Good point: since people would be able to conveniently alias
fonts this way, they would want to for several different reasons.

Don is presumably thinking of running through TeX with tfms in place
for fonts which are otherwise not installed so as to be able to
see from the log file how it turned out, or to print out a very rough
(in terms of appearance, but correct in terms of page breaks etc.)
approximation of the output (using some form of fontmapping at the dvi
driver stage).  This would be what one wants to do in the final
proofint stage of a document which is eventually going to be returned 
to a system with the full set of fonts installed and run off there;
at this point one is just checking for awkward page breaks and so forth 
(using substitute fonts for proofing).

I was thinking of different situations:
  ... working on a document which refers to fonts which are not
  installed, which one wishes to TeX making wholesale font substituions
  for correct output with the substituted fonts, e.g. printing an old
  article with explicit references to am fonts---without having to
  go into the document to edit the font references.  Printing any
  document with explicit references to Postscript fonts on a non-
  Postscript printer (without editing the font references).  
  ... Another instance would be wishing to tinker (at home, or at any other
  site with limited font support) with macros (etc.) to do this or that;
  simulating the ultimate output with the ultimately-to-be-used fonts
  would not be important at this stage of the process; producing
  correct output for the substituted fonts which the previewer/printer
  is actually using would be what is desired so that any bizarre spacing
  problems caused by the macros could be identified---i.e. we aren't
  far enough along to worry about awkward page breaks yet.


I mention aliasing, BTW, only because it seems to me that the existence
of a fontmap file would lend itself to this use; if we propose adding
a new feature, we want to explore a little what people are likely to
do with it.

cheers,
Tom

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Thomas Ridgeway, Director,
Humanities and Arts Computing Center/NorthWest Computing Support Center
35 Thomson Hall, University of Washington, DR-10
Seattle, WA 98195   phone: (206)-543-4218
Internet: ridgeway@blackbox.hacc.washington.edu
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