[Fontinst] letterspacing

[Walter Schmidt]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2002 20:11:51 +0100, Oliver Heins wrote:

>1. I want to space out the letters of a small font (the one I use for
>footnotes) as it's adviced in many typographic books.  AFAIK this is not
>possibly inside of TeX, and I have to produce a virtual font for this.
                                                 ^^^^^^^^
You are entirely correct, so why didn't you do that?

>In the file 8r-olli.etx (which is a copy of 8r.etx) I added a line 
>"\setint{letterspacing}{150}" just after the "\encoding".
>[...]
>I use the 8r-olli.etx within the following script[...]
>| \transformfont{pegr8r}{\reencodefont{8r-olli}{\fromafm{pegr8a}}}

Nonsense!  You are only making a TFM for a reencoded font here.
There is no way to implement letterspacing in a TFM; it must
simply reflect the character metrics of the physical font, so 
use the normal 8r.etx here!

>| \installfont{pegr9d}{pegr8r,unsetnum,kernoff,flir8r,pegrc8r,kernon,latin}{t1}
>|   {T1}{pegj}{m}{n}{}

Here you are making a virtual font (see above!), so _this_ is 
the right place to use 8r.olli.  As a result, the VF will include 
commands to add some empty space before and after each letter.

> [...]
>2. How should I name such a font?  

I use to append the intended size to the KB name.  For instance, 
pegr9d08, if the spacing is optimized for use at a size of 8pt.

HTH
Walter