MetaType1 in TeX Live

Bogusław Jackowski jacko at bop.com.pl
Tue Jun 18 09:35:18 CEST 2019


Dear Colleagues,

some time ago, a discussion on MetaType1 in TeX Live took place -- sorry 
for joining it with a delay.

You know, there are important and urgent matters. And the latter prevail 
over the former ones. ;)

Marcel Krüger:
> I about to publish a package which uses some files from MetaType1,
> especially their MetaPost files. In this context I noticed that
> MetaPost1 is included in TeX Live, but *only* as a source bundle and 
> the
> files are not extracted into the usual directory structure.

> Is there any particular reason for this packaging?

Boris Veytsman:
> Awk scripts are easily translated to Perl, and we do have Perl in the
> Windows distribution.

Reinhard Kotucha:
> do you have automatic translation in mind?  I tried
[...]
>   Translation aborted due to syntax errors.

Boris Veytsman:
> I meant semi-automatic translation:  a2p plus human intervention.

I'm delighted that our almost fossilled engine has eventually aroused 
interest. Perhaps the time is ripe -- Marek Ryćko and me are also 
vividly interested in the modernization of our font generation engine.

The story has its beginning some two years ago, when Piotr Strzelczyk 
started to work on a Python script for MetaType1 that would generate 
OpenType and Type 1 fonts using FonfForge's Python library. His script 
works fine. Alas, Piotr has changed his job and the area of interest.

I asked Marek Ryćko for help -- he agreed to maintain Piotr's work and 
came up with the idea of modernization of MetaType1. So far, Marek 
prepared a preliminary version of a "Python shell" for MetaType1 
eliminating all Awk scripts. It resulted in the clarifying and 
facilitating of the installation procedure.

We believe that we will be able to publish the "awkless" version of 
MetaType1 by the end of this year. (Perhaps a new name should be coined 
-- PostScript Type 1 is not any more the format of importance.) If we 
manage to complete the new version of the system till the end of 2019, 
does it make sense to make also any quick changes in the existing 
version? Anyway, we are not going to maintain MetaType1 in its old form.

And an additional question: when the next release of TeX Live is 
scheduled?

All the best -- cheers -- Jacko & Marek


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