Jonathan Kew wrote:
Font names and font filenames are quite different, in many cases, and it didn't seem wise to mix them up and allow the exact same form of the \font declaration to access either one. This could lead to ambiguity and confusion in the case where a filename does happen to be the same as a font name.
As for why square brackets.... why not? :) We just needed a way to distinguish filenames from font names, and this seemed a reasonably safe choice -- unlikely to be present in a real font name, and not usually given special treatment in TeX.
hm, but square brackets can interfere with optional args where [] don't nest well (tex does not treat them as delimiters as it does {} using {} would probably have been safer or maybe () (round ones) since afaik these are seldom used for delimiting args; or maybe just file:somename anyhow, if it's filename stuff i can probably just feed the [] deep down in context to the xetex font command will think of something please forward to jonathan since his mailer an dmy mail server don;t like each other -) Hans -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------