Encoding for SC-fonts

[Walter Schmidt]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 13:48:05 +0100, Christian H. Kuhn wrote:

>> This matters, for instance, in the case of Palatino, where pplrc8t 
>> is the faked smallcaps VF, distributed with PSNFSS,  whereas pplrc9e 
>> would use the real Palatino-SC font.
>
>I see the point. But - is it really good to allow the choice between 
>faked and real SC? If NOT naming real SC as expert encoded, they 
>would overwrite the faked. So if having the real SC, they would be 
>used without further change instead of the faked SC.
>
>But perhaps there IS one example where it makes sense to have a 
>choice between faked and real SC?

Yes:  If you install my metrics for Palatino with real SC/OsF
fonts, you must not overwrite the metrics, VFs and FDs that came 
with PSNFSS.  Otherwise the formatting of existing documents 
might change.  The font family "ppl" from PSNFSS, with faked 
smallcaps, remains unchanged.  "pplx" and "pplj", in contrast, 
are those with the real SC/OsF fonts.

[In theory, the normal pplr9e should not differ from pplr8t, 
because the SC font is not involved.  OTOH, the VF is generated 
from a different fontinst script, so I am on the safe side 
when using a different name:   Actually the VFs _are_ different 
in my case, because I apply a few fixes to the kerning.]

Generally, one user may want to install a font family with
SC/OsF, whereas another one cannot provide (or afford) them.
The related VFs and metrics may differ, so they should not 
have the same names.  

happy TeXing

Walter

PS:  
I regret that the PSNFSS bundle always provided faked smallcaps.  
Abolishing them, when I took over the maintenance of PSNFSS,
would have caused a major uproar from the TeX community, though.