On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 2:18 PM Hans Hagen <j.hagen@xs4all.nl> wrote:
On 3/25/2020 2:06 PM, The Thanh Han wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> it seems the primary problem is that pdftex tries to set font expansion
> parameters for a font without checking if the font has been
> successfully loaded (hence it modifies null_font which is totally wrong).
>
> Please find the proposed patch attached. I have tested it against your
> test files (thanks again for making things easy to reproduce).
But shouldn't there be some message then too?

I agree clear message should be given when something goes wrong. In 
this case however I don't know what  message should pdftex say. The 
fix is about preventing pdftex from doing something it should not, i.e. setting 
expansion parameters for a font that could not be loaded.

Regards,
Thanh