[comp.fonts] Ligature characters not working

dan@maccs.UUCP (Dan Trottier) (04/16/88)

I have a problem with TeX not producing ligature characters when the
font is not the default (i.e., cmr10).

In place of the proper ligature we get a --, $, or a ~ character
depending on which ligature was to be used. I realize that some
font file must be missing or needs to be rebuilt but I have no 
idea what the procedure is.

We are running the TeX distribution from the University of Washington
on a VAX 11/780 and sending the output to an Imagen 3320 laser printer.

I have had several other problems with this distribution many of which
are still unsolved. How does one generate different sizes of the pxl
files? We need to be able to print different sized circles in LaTeX
but can't. I run the identical LaTeX file under PCTeX and the circles
appear. The only circle fonts I could find were in 300gf, and mf format.
I created the tfm files and 1500pxl files but how do you get pxl files
for other sizes???

Is there perhaps someone who has the TeX distribution set up on a BSD 4.3
machine and running an Imagen laser that is willing to write a set of
tapes for us. I would be more than willing to send all necessary tapes
as well as pay full return postage. Perhaps we should wait for the new
release of TeX from Washington? Written in C instead of Pascal and 
supposedly faster, I hear.

One last thing, much of the documentation that came with TeX seemed to
have used the older set of amr style fonts. Of course the distribution
of TeX didn't include these fonts. Needless to say printing out the
documentation wasn't a fun chore. Where can I find these older fonts
and is it worth it to have them on the system. It seems that many
people still use them.

Thanks
-- 
       A.I. - is a three toed sloth!        | ...!uunet!mnetor!maccs!dan
-- Official scrabble players dictionary --  | dan@mcmaster.BITNET

ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (04/17/88)

Here we have only circle10 and circlew10. The fonts themselves contain
all the different sized circles.

Am fonts are obsolete. The easiest way to convert is to change all
references from "am" to "cm". There will be a couple of odd typefaces
missing, but in general this will work.

It sounds to me like your printer driver isn't downloading the TeX
fonts and you are getting the native fonts on the printer, which have
the ligatures in different positions.  You didn't say what printer
language the 3220 accepts. You might want to get a better dvi to ?
driver.

Incidentally, recent distributions of Unix TeX require that you bring
up METAFONT to generate any extra sizes you need. You definitely need
METAFONT for SliTeX, unless somebody else sends you the fonts.

There is a mailing list for La/TeX discussion. Mail
texhax-request@score.stanford.edu to join. Bitnet users should mail a
message saying SUBSCRIBE TEX-L to the LISTSERVER at tamvm1.bitnet.

	Ken