Hans Hagen said this at Mon, 30 May 2005 23:52:42 +0200:

...

easy to read. In Bringhurst's book he mentions fleurons - "A horticultural dingbat" which I would like to access. I have looked through the Context

if you can track down the font, it's no problem to get it typeset

I've been revisiting my Dingbat support, and am close to a release, but ran into a bug on my system. In the meantime, this might help:

\loadmapfile[pdftex_dl14] % Make sure we embed the dingbats \definefontsynonym [ZapfDingbat] [pzdr] % maybe uzdr

\def\ZapfDingbatSymb#1{\getglyph{ZapfDingbat}{\char#1}}

\startsymbolset[Zapf Hearts] \definesymbol[HeavyBlackHeart] [\ZapfDingbatSymb{164}] \definesymbol[RotatedHeavyBlackHeartBullet][\ZapfDingbatSymb{165}] \definesymbol[FloralHeart] [\ZapfDingbatSymb{166}] \definesymbol[RotatedFloralHeartBullet] [\ZapfDingbatSymb{167}] \stopsymbolset

\definesymbol[1][{\symbol[Zapf Hearts][FloralHeart]}] \definesymbol[2][{\symbol[Zapf Hearts][RotatedFloralHeartBullet]}]

\starttext

\startitemize \item Most fleurons are font||specific. \item Zapf Dingbats contains a couple interesting fleurons. \startitemize \item This is a place to start. \stopitemize \stopitemize

\centerline{\symbol[Zapf Hearts][HeavyBlackHeart]}

\stoptext

Hans Hagen said this at Tue, 31 May 2005 08:37:26 +0200:

Adam Lindsay wrote:

...

\loadmapfile[pdftex_dl14] % Make sure we embed the dingbats \definefontsynonym [ZapfDingbat] [pzdr] % maybe uzdr

better use uzdr since pzdr is an aliassed file

another thing to work on: uzdr.tfm wasn't on my gwTeX install, but an aliased pzdr was. Sigh.

Hans Hagen said this at Tue, 31 May 2005 12:14:44 +0200:

ps. i know that thomas has a minimalistic approach: as less files as

possible

and this is one source of the aliasses file; maybe fine for tetex, but potentially disastrous for tex live

All good points. The solution (work-around that fits in currently existing schemes) that presented itself about 15 minutes after hitting "send" was to add \definefontsynonym [uzdr] [pzdr] ...to each of the adobekb typescripts.

And to add uzdr.tfm to the list of candidates for cont-fnt dist, as well. :)

On Tue, 31 May 2005, Karl Berry wrote:

this differes per year; i keep changing these names and always lag
behind one tex live version

TL has always distributed both pzdr.tfm and uzdr.tfm. I don't have an easy way to check the situation in teTeX.

teTeX has only pzdr.tfm. See below for reasons.

one of the previous tex lives someone moved the urw's to some 35vf
folder, after that things went bad (got lost and such); i discussed
this with Staszek and he reverted it;

Starting in TL 2003, uzdr.tfm was indeed put under urw35vf instead of just urw. I do not know/remember why, or who did it (though we could check the logs), or what "got lost" as a result. It is also still the case in the current sources, so I also don't know what you mean by Staszek "reverted it". Staszek, what did you do?

I can explain it once again. In 2003 all that urw mess was hopefully cleaned on CTAN and then on TL. Discussion started on 6 june and on 24 july that's me, who cleaned it for TL. The *base* 35 urw fonts (only afm and pfm/pfb) were prepared *after* all that urw tfm, vf etc. support files were made.

From README.base35

TeX systems can use these fonts as drop-in replacements for Adobe's PostScript Base fonts, which are not free. No particular TeX metrics, virtual fonts or macro files are provided for URW's base fonts. They are to be used with the same support files as Adobe's originals, i.e., with the files of the PSNFSS collection.

AFM and PFM files are supplied here for the sake of completeness only. They are normally not required for use with TeX.

In fact, nobody knows how the *old* mess with tfm, vf etc. fits to more *new* urw pfb which are of better quality then the older ones. Anyway both distributions cannot be mixed. Not to say about packaging, etc. So I introduced "urw35vf" (#3416) which contains all (historical) stuff for those using urw fonts directly (.vf, .tfm, .fd, .sty files). Everybody has freedom using them from TL. Thomas removed such stuff from teTeX as simply garbage.

Meanwhile, the afm and pfb are under just urw/. It seems odd, though I can imagine how it could happen.

??? Everything is OK: fonts/afm/urw/ and fonts/type1/urw/

Clearly the URW fonts are not 100% identical to the Adobe fonts, but in practice we have to accept the URW Type 1's under the p* names, because the p* names are what most documents have historically used. We can't suddenly make those documents unusable, that would be disastrous.

For that matter, the Adobe fonts themselves have changed over the years. Nothing is perfect.

Right.

but context (users) expect the whole set of urw (afm & pfb) to be
present because they generate other encodings and such;

uzdr.afm and uzdr.pfb are both in the current TL sources, and always have been. I know of no reason or suggestion to delete them.

They are as well present in teTeX.

i think that we need to get rid of the urw mappings in the aliases file

I agree. I have now deleted the aliases file altogether from the TL sources. We'll see how that flies. I don't know if that will change anything wrt gwTeX, though.

Ahh, I see! aliases could cause problems. Thanks for deleting that file.

Best,

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Hans Hagen wrote:

Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:

...

AFM and PFM files are supplied here for the sake of completeness only. They are normally not required for use with TeX.

this is not true, you need the afm's when you use them to make graphics in other progs that will then be used by tex; also, you need them in order to generate metrics for encodings other than teh shipped ones

Hans, I cited readme by Walter and tried to explain: there's no ready tfm metrics for _those_ urw. Existing ones were generated for older, not so nice urw fonts.

...

In fact, nobody knows how the *old* mess with tfm, vf etc. fits to more *new* urw pfb which are of better quality then the older ones. Anyway both distributions cannot be mixed. Not to say about packaging, etc. So I introduced "urw35vf" (#3416) which contains all (historical) stuff for those using urw fonts directly (.vf, .tfm, .fd, .sty files). Everybody has freedom using them from TL. Thomas removed such stuff from teTeX as simply garbage.

he's free to do that but it sounds strange and dangerous to me

Why? Anybody is free to make tfm files, as afm files are always available for _that_ set of urw fonts.

On Wednesday 01 June 2005 11:53 pm, Hans Hagen wrote:

Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:

...

Why? Anybody is free to make tfm files, as afm files are always available for _that_ set of urw fonts.

the problem is that there is a bunch of context users out there who think (are being told, whatever) that they should use the provided ones instead of generating them by texfont or afm2tfm (so they want to use the presumably present ones and not generate them by texfont, which is ok for me; but unfortunately they are not always there; and then they try the ps ones, which are only there for ec and not for texnansi and then ... and then ...)

well, i give up on fonts ... maybe some day i just put metric files in the context zip (ec texnansi qx), why should i care about those few extra bytes

I use only the 8r encoding because I write/typeset in (American) English and I need special characters like the copyright symbol. the registered symbol, the trademark (tm) symbol and so on. Some of these are not available in other encodings, or at least I cannot find them. I understand that Europeans prefer other encodings with good reason but 8r needs to remain in the scheme of things IMO.

I not only use plain tex, pdftex, Context etc. in my own work I advertise these Open Source solutions as effective alternatives to e.g., InDesign. To sell the system to new users requires a K.I.S.S. approach.

Is there a problem in Context with making the URW fonts the default and then just aliasing the Adobe names to the URW versions? The more we can hide these details the better.

Font handling is the great Achilles heel of all flavors of TeX, as we all know. Since Context is (relatively) new if we can jigger things around so that the K.I.S.S. principle is adhered to then selling the concept to new users will be easier. Too many people in the printing world have horrid memories of LaTeX from their college days or other earlier experience.

(K.I.S.S. = "Keep it simple silly.)

thanks for your patience

And thanks for Context!

On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 00:25 +0200, Hartmut Henkel wrote:

On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, John R. Culleton wrote:

...

(K.I.S.S. = "Keep it simple silly.)

wasn't the 2nd S. "stupid"?

I always thought it was "Stuart". ;-)

[...]

I not only use plain tex, pdftex, Context etc. in my own work I advertise these Open Source solutions as effective alternatives to e.g., InDesign. To sell the system to new users requires a K.I.S.S. approach.

K.I.S.S and TeX in one sentence must be a joke.

Is there a problem in Context with making the URW fonts the default and then just aliasing the Adobe names to the URW versions? The more we can hide these details the better.

It's ony one line in cont-sys.tex and two lines of code in your environment file to select the font. But you have to know the right ones :)

Patrick