[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)
More information about the tex-live
mailing list