John R. Culleton wrote:

Linux distros have been emphasizing the use of the fonts in fc-cache across applications. TeX always did its own thing, with tfm files, mapping files etc. I note that some of the newer TeX products are using pfb + afm instead of pfb + tfm. Does this presage the availablity of all the fonts described in the fc-cache files or will TeX continue to have its own set of fonts?

i never looked into fc-cache things (mostly working on windows) pdftex does not use databases, xetex does, and in luatex one can build any kind of font database support; currently in mkiv i just build a database based on osfontdir plus the usual paths; i can support other 'font resources as well' if needed tfm files are very special to tex and not relevant for other apps (apart from the fact that there can be tens of thousands of those metric files) in mkiv there is support for otf/ttf/ttc, afm/pfb (i will implement an alternative loader, the current one is afm driven, but we can also have a pfb driven one) as well as ofm/tfm/ovf/vf metric files there will always be tfm files but new fonts will be open type (lm, gyre, etc) 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------