Hartmut Henkel wrote:
All this only as long as the font is not yet in use, right?
depends on what 'in use is', but i assume that it follows the same strategy as map lines, so 'as long as not yet frozen by usage' is ok -)
Another maybe more simple way would be some font aliasing mechanism, creating a "virtual" tfmname, e. g. \pdffonttfmalias{cmr10 hcmr10} (while no hcmr10.tfm exists), and then you can create a normal map line starting with hcmr10...
i've been thinking about that, but the problem is that it will overload all
usages of fonts since tex shares them, so
\font\a=cmr10 at 10pt \pdfsetfontenc\a{< one.enc}
\font\b=cmr10 at 10pt \pdfsetfontenc\b{< two.enc}
would indeed mean two different mapping for each instance; while an alias would
apply the enc to both instances (sorry, bit fuzzy explanation)
btw, aliasing could be a nice feature for other reasons, think of:
$someenc=blabla.enc
$someenc-bla1