Re: [NTG-context] chancery font

Idris, thank you very much for your explanations... they are very helpful. regarding ttf translation, I have in my system (I guess it came with texlive2004) a little software "ttf2pt1" that does the job. unix> ttf2pt1 -b fontname.ttf and it produces the two files: fontname.afm, fontname.pfb which then I used with your "cooking" instructions for garamond... BTW, how do you use a ttf font directly in context? thank you Ciro On Apr 3, 2005 2:45 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:

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===== Original Message From ciro@kavyata.com, mailing list for ConTeXt users ===== My problem goes beyond fonts. What I think I need is a simple explanation of the TeX-like package system. For instance:

I see tetex,pdftex,contex, latex,web2c,...and so on, but I don't understand their interrelation/dependency.

teTeX, fpTeX, gwTeX, and MiKTeX are os-dependent distrbutions.

LaTeX and ConTeXt are os-independent macropackages.

Web2C is the Pascal-to-C translator that allows compilation of TeX on Unix, Windows, etc. /web2c is the directory that contains configuration files and os-dependent format files. But I don't know why it's called "/web2c"

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Why the livetex tree is like it is? What is needed for a context user?

ConTeXt has become so detailed and powerful, and changes so fast, that the os-dependent distrbutions can't keep up. I predict that one day ConTeXt will be completely independent of TeXLive. Some of the problems many of us have been facing ultimately boil down to the growing, but not yet complete, independence of ConTeXt from TeXLive. Personally, I think this a good thing, because ConTeXt is really a stand-alone system in the final analysis. mswincontext.zip is _almost_ there; maybe Hans could use volunteers to build and maintain independent Mac and Unix packages a la mswincontext.zip. Then we could contribute to a test/torture suite to make sure that everything runs identically on all os's. Each of us may have pet issues that concern us (I have my aleph work for example, there are fonts, xml, etc).

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What are the steps to upgrade context with a cont-tmf.zip and a texlive2004? Would it be possible to create an shell script that automize all this?

I would get the tetex package from pragma, install it in its own tree, define your path so that your ConTeXt bin is searched BEFORE TeXLive's, and have your shell script initialize your tree (maybe there are instructions in the teTeX package). I modified my setuptex.bat so that my ConTeXt tree would search my TeXLive tree as well; I suppose you could do the same with setuptex.csh.

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Where are fonts registered/stored/mapped/encoded?

There is a document somewhere on the TeX Directory Structure (tds), I think. Look in /texmf/doc/tds

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Most books on TeX,latex, etc, only explain how to use them, but not the 'system administration' part, which must of us have to learn as well.

There is an old book, Making TeX Work, that aimed to do just this. But it's 11 years old and woefully out of date.

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BTW, I used Idris instructions (without step4 because my texfont works) and I have installed three different fonts so far. Actually, I converted TTF fonts to pfb/afm, then used the Idris steps, and I am happy.

How did you convert ttf>pfb? I did this once using FontLab and I lost all my macron accents:-(

But texfont and pdfetex work with ttf files so there is no need to convert:-)

Now I hace to learn how

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to build typescript files, and learn where to put them,

What I did was just get one complete working typescript and model my other typescripts on that one. If type-ugm is working for you, just study that one. Five steps:

% raw fonts %Names %Synonyms %maps %typefaces

Note that you can mix and match fonts to create your own complete typefaces. I am enclosing a typescript I did for Times New Roman and Arial (type-tnr.tex) that I posted a few weeks ago.

About placing type-* files: You can put them anywhere in your TeX path; I put mine, along with some other private configuration files, in /texmf-local/tex/generic/private, but you can put them anywhere you like under your TeX path.

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and the mapping/encoding business.

I think you don't have to worry about this too much, except that texfont defaults to texnansi, while the fonts that come with TeXLive are mostly ec. So you should avoid use of \char as much as possible in your macros, and stick to character control sequences like \circumflex.

Best Idris

============================ Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

-- ======================================= "All problems are at the interface. Each one of them has a solution." from: "The Guitar Maker, An Exploration of Wisdom, Design and Love." A novel by C. A. Soto Aguirre. Pub. Date: Aug. 2005.