Hi Phil & Reinhard,
Reinhard sumarized it well enough: it's not trivial to do.
Also, adding new features to pdftex is not desired now.
If you want to alter the font matrix, maybe it's worthwhile
to take a look at the examples in samplepdf.tex. It requires
some macro programming, but I am sure it's trivial for you.
Regards,
Thanh
On Sun, Dec 07, 2008 at 06:57:16AM +0100, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) writes:
> > Dear Thanh / PdfTeX team --
> >
> > Has any consideration ever been given to the idea
> > of extending the syntax of TeX's \font command
> > within the context (small "c") of PdfTeX ?
> >
> > What I have in mind are the following :
> >
> > \font \cmex = cmex10 rotated <angle>
> > \font \cmex = cmex10 translated <matrix>
>
> Hi Phil,
> I like such a feature too. But there are some technical problems.
> Type 1 fonts have a font matrix which can be altered when a font is
> loaded. It's quite easy to change the matrix in order to slant,
> rotate, ... a font. But pdftex also supports TrueType fonts which are
> lacking a font matrix.
>
> It doesn't mean that pdftex isn't able to do what you propose, but
> it's nontrivial. It has to alter the so-called PDF text matrix.
> But this sounds easier than it is.
>
> I made a similar suggestion a few years ago. I modified the text
> matrix of a PDF file in order to slant an upright font and posted the
> resulting PDF file to the mailing list. I asked whether pdftex can't
> do something similar. I got a response from Mark Wicks, the author of
> dvipdfm. He said: "Your example is too simple." He had been right,
> things turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.
>
> And changing the matrix isn't sufficient. You'll certainly have to
> adapt the .tfm files. All this doesn't look like a weekend project.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard
>
> --
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> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
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