On Feb 12, 2007, at 6:50 PM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

A question to Hans: I do not know much about fonts, but from what I understand ec is ugly and one should use texnansi. So why does ConTeXt default to ec. I am sure that for most users like, fonts in TeX is a mystry, and they do not really care which font encoding is used, as long as it works. So, can we move to texnansi as the default? Or is there something at which ec is really better?

Aditya

Well, it pretty much depends what you want. EC has lots of accented letters for many languages, and since it is much more popular in the LaTeX world than texnansi, you'll find many more tfm files in your TeX installation with ec encoding than with texnansi. In fact, having texnansi as default was one of the headaches in my early ConTeXt days because ConTeXt would ask for texnansi-lm... files which simply weren't there. Many convenient things (like Euro, a couple of fractions, degree etc.) are not in ec, but in the LaTeX world, most ec-fonts are accompanied by a ts1-encoded counterpart, and switching to this for these symbols is automatic; we don't have this in ConTeXt, AFAICS. But now, Latin Modern is pretty complete, as are the tex gyre fonts, so yes, IMHO, switching to texnansi as default could make sense. \startmode[hansmode] Ah, wait for luatex where fonts can use the afm and create encodings on the fly, so we don't need to worry about this anymore! \stopmode ;-) Thomas

Hans Hagen wrote:

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

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\startmode[hansmode] Ah, wait for luatex where fonts can use the afm and create encodings on the fly, so we don't need to worry about this anymore! \stopmode

sure, and make virtual fonts on the fly as well -)

In fact, in luatex almost all fonts will be in 'unicode' encoding, like they are in xetex already. Taco

On 2/12/07, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

A question to Hans: I do not know much about fonts, but from what I understand ec is ugly and one should use texnansi.

What exactly do you mean with "ugly"?

So why does ConTeXt default to ec. I am sure that for most users like, fonts in TeX is a mystry,

Probably true.

and they do not really care which font encoding is used, as long as it works.

Maybe not for English and German users. But most other (European) languages need EC to cover all their letters (i.e. to make hyphenation work at all). Although not all languages are listed there, take a look into lang-ctx.tex.

So, can we move to texnansi as the default?

Context used texnansi as the default encoding in past and I would say the opposite: those who care and really need to use texnansi, probably know that better than an average user who would need ec to support his language properly, but doesn't know that. (Although I've been using "TeX" quite some time now, I never noticed the difference until two years ago when I was using some strange combinations of letters in Antykwa Torunska which has different accents on capital letters - and I started wandering why Č and Š looked so different.) The problem with euro came with the new TeXLive. But it's not ec's fault only that it doesn't work. But as others already said - uc will soon be the default anyway ... Mojca

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

On Feb 13, 2007, at 1:44 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

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Maybe not for English and German users. But most other (European) languages need EC to cover all their letters (i.e. to make hyphenation work at all).

Although not all languages are listed there, take a look into lang- ctx.tex.

I haven't really looked into this, but I think you're slightly exaggerating: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch should be OK with texnansi, too.

most patterns in their original form assume ec; however, context uses utf encoded patterns, and can load them then for as many encodings as you like; some languages have ec and texnansi patterns (has to do with the fact that patterns and fonts are related) 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Aditya Mahajan wrote:

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

...

On 2/12/07, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

...

A question to Hans: I do not know much about fonts, but from what I understand ec is ugly and one should use texnansi.

What exactly do you mean with "ugly"?

Did I say that I do not know about fonts :) I was just reflecting on what I have seen on the mailing list. Most problems in fonts with missing characters etc is due to ec encoding (I remember something in the past about \textmu not being present in ec). By ugly I meant that ConTeXt has to work harder behind the scenes to make sure that ec works.

oh, i thought that you meant the euro, which indeed is a pretty ugly symbol not meant to blend with a properly designed font

In any case, with luatex, TeX's font scene will be totally different (I know, I know, I should atleast try XeTeX)

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 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Bernd Militzer wrote:

Wolfgang Schuster schrieb:

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Hi Bernd,

I tried this on my system and it work with \texteuro and \euro. Dont't I my sytem or contextgarden is wrong, because ConTeXt use on my machine the euro sign from the marvosym fonts and not from fmvr8x.

Marvosym's tfm file is called fmvr8x.tfm. Or rather, it used to be called that. In the new version, it is renamed to umvs.tfm. Best, Taco