[tex-k] Which fonts are installed?

[Fabio Stumbo]

> > (I looked on the web for some help, but I am not been able to find 
> > anything:
> 
> (and also posted to comp.text.tex)
> 

and, to say it all, I also posted to the tetex mailing list which, in 
principle, seemed the more specific place. But there I got no reply at 
all.

> > I think this is the right place to ask.)
> 
> it's certainly a candidate.  i doubt you'll get much more change out
> of this forum than you did of comp.text.tex

I was sure that there was a nonempty intersection between the users of the
three forums, but very likely the union is much bigger, so (not having had
a good reply somewhere) it didn't seem me so much blamefull to ask the
same question somewhere else. It was not a crosspost.

> > I know there is a useful file called testfont.tex: its only drawback is 
> > that it asks me for the font to be tested... I would like to tell him: 
> > test all fonts!
> 
> knuth wrote testfont as a font-testing tool (surprise!); there's
> little chance that anything at the tex level could make sensible
> decisions about the existence or otherwise of a font.

In fact, it shouldn't be, IMHO, at the TeX level. It should be at the 
level of the TeX packaging, like, for example, texconfig. Which, by the 
way, could be greatly improved: just to say one point, when you select the 
dvips menu in texconfig, it doesn't even tell you which are the printers 
already installed, so if you want delete (or, more commonly, modify) a 
printer setting, you have to guess which are the current settings by 
exploring the config files. The same for the most part of all other 
menus. 
(at least, unless I am missing some other very basic program... ;-))
I don't know exactly if texconfig belongs to web2c or to tetex: in the 
latter case, of course, this is the wrong place to talk about, but maybe 
some developer is listening...

> > Somebody suggested me to look for all *.tfm files and test them, with a 
> > script. It works, but it doesn't show all the fonts (for example, ecbl is 
> > missing), and it can also show some font which is not available.
> 
> ecbl isn't a font.  ecbl0500, ecbl0600, ecbl0700, ecbl0800, ecbl0900,
> ecbl1000, ecbl1095, ecbl1200, ecbl1440, ecbl1728, ecbl2074, ecbl2488,
> ecbl2986 and ecbl3583 are.  which one do you want?

I was meaning the family, for short: I was looking for bold text italic, 
and finally I used ecbl10.

> 
> > Wouldn't it be nice if there were an utility for this?
> 
> it would be nice if microsoft would contribute a few salaries to help
> develop such things, too.

Right! But, maybe, without the effort of "people who are never recognized 
for doing their duty" (or their fun), I fear we would have nothing to talk 
about here, because TeX would have never be realized. 
Nor linux, vim, emacs, gimp, just to name a few. You can add your 
favourites... ;-))
 
Regards

Fabio