Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Path: utzoo!sq!lee
From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin)
Subject: Re: RFC -- a TeX font naming system
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.183211.7390@sq.sq.com>
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
References: <DAMIAN.CUGLEY.91Apr17163401@pierrot.prg.ox.ac.uk> <1991Apr20.214907.13178@sq.sq.com> <DAMIAN.CUGLEY.91Apr22174343@pierrot.prg.ox.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 91 18:32:11 GMT
Lines: 45

Damian.Cugley@prg.ox.ac.uk (Damian Cugley) writes:
>From:		Liam R. E. Quin <lee@sq.sq.com>
>
>> Note that it is useful to separate weight (bold, medium) from face (roman,
>> oblique, slanted, italic), so that using "cbo" for Courier-Bold-Oblique is
>> probably bad.
>
>I am combining the "face" info into one word for several reasons:
>firstly, TeX has no useful way to treat weight, width, slant etc.
>separately; secondly, it's shorter; thirdly, it allows the old fonts --
>cmr12 etc. -- to remain unchanged.

Those are all good reasons.

>I prefer
>	Adobe-NewCenturySchoolbook-r 
>[...]
>to the XLFD name
> -Adobe-New Century Schoolbook-Medium-I-Normal--24-240-75-75-P-136-ISO8859-1
>
>if only because it is shorter -- and IMO more comprehensible.

Well, so do I from a user's point of view.  The X11 name does allow font
substitution, at least to a certain extent.
I _would_ prefer to see use of existing font names rather than see the
invention of a new set of conventions, though, so keeping Bold-Oblique
still sounds better to me.  There's no reason why there can't be a short
cut, so the macros put the long form in the dvi file even if the user typed
Compugraphic-Triumvirate-bo in the input.  Most users would probably be happy
wih ``Helvetica'' and would take Triumvirate or Adobe or Linotype or whatever
they got, I imagine!


I have had mail asking that font components be limited to 6 or less
characters, which also seems to me to be an unnecessary abomination, since
the fonts do not have to be stored under the long names on the computer.

Lee


-- 
Liam Russell Quin, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto... 416 963 8337... lee@sq.com
	   `What one person finds valuable others do not even notice.
	    And they do not notice that they do not notice.'
-- Scott Kim, `Interdisciplinary Communication', in `The Art of [HCI] Design'
