[NTG-context] texfont: installed font only works with pdftex

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

On Aug 9, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

>> I've experimented with afm2pl, and as I wrote in an earlier mail: the
>> beginning of EC.enc with its additional LIGKERN instructions confuses
>> it so it will not include default ligatures.
>
> As it turns out, this is the same for afm2tfm. And to make matters
> even more confusing, I had the following problem: At one point,
> I had copied EC.enc to the current directory and fixed it. However,
> it still didn't work, because:
>
>    [taco at glenlivet new]$ ls *.enc
>    EC.enc
>
>    [taco at glenlivet new]$ kpsewhich --progname=dvips ec.enc
>    /opt/tex/teTeX/texmf/fonts/enc/dvips/base/EC.enc
>
> because of a line in /opt/tex/teTeX/texmf/aliases :-/
>
>
>
> Either way, it seems that this LIGKERN interpretation that
> overrules the afm file is actually considered a feature. The
> sane way out seems to be to ship our own encoding files in
>
>    fonts/enc/texfont
>
> or so.
>
> Taco

Yes, I have a dim recollection that afm2tfm has the same problem.  
Isn't lm-ec.enc the better choice anyway? Couldn't we make texfont  
default to lm-ec.enc when it is called with --en=EC?

And for the LIGKERN: yes, I asked about them on the tex-fonts list a  
while ago, and nobody considered them a problem. IMHO, they're  
totally useless or even worse, but I received the same ol' answers:  
can't change that, it's legacy etc. I think Mojca knows something  
about this as well. So my suggestion would be: make ec a synonym for  
lm-ec in texfont (but then, because of one or to glyphnames, lm- 
ec.enc has to be in the mapfile as well).

Thomas