Hi,
> On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, h h extern wrote:
>
>
> >>> > Now "!foo.pfb" will be treated by the inner pdftex workings as font
> >>> > with name "!foo.pfb" which is not found, obviously. So pdftex munges
> >>> > "!foo.pfb" and "foo.pfb" differently.
> >
> >>
> >> hm, i suggest to drop the ! (since we need the first char for +-=)
>
>
> the ! has been in for long time, so shouldn't it stay there for
> backwards compatibility? Virtually nobody knows about the new !-less
> case as it's documented nowhere, so anybody wanting this no-load feature
> will use the ! sign.
>
> And the +-= go in front of the tfm names, not the fontfile names. So +-=
> doesn't collide with the ! anyway.
>
>
> >> and stick t < and <<
>
>
> It's in my suggested patch (does the same with and without !) but this
> can be left out if wanted.
I think the ! has ever been used only once by me during some testing. We should
drop it, as it is pretty useless.
The case without anything (ie "foo foo.pfb") can be useful, however I am not
aware of any practical use of this. In short, it can be used so font
files are not embedded (to make the pdf smaller), and at the same time
keep the document nearly the same as in case the fonts are embedded
(only metrics are copied to pdf; the glyphs will be rendered by acrobat
reader).
Thanh