mike@yetti.UUCP (Mike Clarkson ) (11/20/86)
Yesterday I spoke to Pierre MacKay at Washington (MacKay@Washington.ARPA) who handles the Unix distribution of TeX. The SliTeX fonts in Metafont have just been added to the Unix distribution. To my knowledge, this is the only set of generally available SliTeX fonts. All of the other distributions (K&S, Maria Code, PCTeX) have failed to provide these fonts, although of course they were each shipped with SliTeX. There has been some discussion on the Unix-TeX mailing list of some dvi drivers gagging on the SliTeX invisible fonts. Note that as most of these drivers have never seen an invisible font before (none were out there) there is the possibility that they will not work with SliTeX. The Unix Distribution tape is $100, available in 9 track 1600 bpi tar tape from the University of Washington, Dept. of Computer Science, FR-35, Seattle, WA 98195, Attn: TeX Distribution Center. -- Mike Clarkson, ...!allegra \ BITNET: mike@YUYETTI or CRESS, York University, ...!decvax \ SYMALG@YUSOL 4700 Keele Street, ...!ihnp4 > !utzoo!yetti!mike North York, Ontario, ...!linus / CANADA M3J 1P3. ...!watmath / Phone: +1 (416) 736-2100 x 7767 "...the most inevitable business communications system on the planet." - ROLM magazine advertisement which planet?
chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (11/20/86)
In article <443@yetti.UUCP>, mike@yetti.UUCP (Mike Clarkson ) writes: >... There has been some discussion on the Unix-TeX mailing list >of some dvi drivers gagging on the SliTeX invisible fonts. Note >that as most of these drivers have never seen an invisible font >before (none were out there) there is the possibility that they >will not work with SliTeX. That is not quite right. The problem is that the SLiTeX invisible fonts tickled a bug in Old Metafont, generating incorrect PXL files. As I recall, the only other standard font that did this was `amtex10', which was little used and had only one or two bad characters, so it never proved a problem. I wrote a program to fix the bad PXL files; I can provide it to those who are desperate. I do not know whether the Metafont bug was fixed; the bug is not present in Metafont 84, at any rate, and the new SLiTeX fonts may well be correct. Even so, I feel that *having* invisible fonts is rather silly. If there are no pixels, why have pixel files? The TFM files are of course necessary, as TeX must believe that it is setting characters, yet the TFM files are *all* that is necessary. The trick is to make the device drivers recognise this. The latest version of C-TeX (as yet unreleased: it is still undergoing alpha test, and has no documentation) provides the proper functions to read TFM files as fonts. All that is necessary is making a few links, and all the invisible fonts will be available in every possible size. The new code also supports PXL, GF, and PK files simultaneously; all you need do is edit the font description file to specify which directories are to be searched in which order. If you include one other entry in this file, the same code that provides invisible fonts in arbitrary sizes will allow printing files with `missing' font sizes, substituting either blank space, a la the invisible fonts, or little boxes representing TeX's idea of the characters, much like the `line of type' example in the TeXbook. The font code has been completely redone, so that adding support for more font files should be almost trivial. The new C-TeX should be out soon, depending on how much time I devote to writing documentation, versus catching up on old stuff like distributing the UDA50 driver or installing 4.3BSD locally.... [Note UUCP name change!] -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690) UUCP: seismo!mimsy!chris ARPA/CSNet: chris@mimsy.umd.edu