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Re: comments on mathfont-0.5


On Tue, 2 Sep 1997, Ulrik Vieth wrote:

> > This is really a bug. I probably have always looked at the mf sources
> > in the various working directories. The easiest solution would probably
> > be to simply omit the copying and leave the mf sources in the various
> > subdirectories. On a second thought, the files in mathfont/mf are
> > really useless, they will never be used by the make process unless you
> > remove their originals from ym[a-f].
> 
> Well, the problem is MakeTeXPK triggered from dvips or xdvi.  After
> sourcing PATHS form the shell, all subdirectories are searched and the
> first file with matching name found will be used.  Duplicate filenames
> are always a problem and should absolutely be avoided, as it is cleary 
> pointed out in the TDS standard.

OK, so I'll come up with some unique filenames.  

[...]

> > Since you have proposed a more traditional layout of MX, I'd like to 
> > hear your opinion on the xm[bf]s fonts which offer only the traditional
> > range of larger sizes. I decided to keep the splitting in MX1/MX2.
> > This has the big advantage that the macros can be the same - just the
> > variable parts of the font encodings are different and these are not
> > directly accessed by macros.
> 
> Well, one reason for having a more traditional layout of MX was to
> keep the number of math families (or \mathgroup's in LaTeX) restricted
> to 4 or 6 for compatiblity with plain or AMS TeX.  Besides there is
> only one \fam3 slot where the required \fontdimes are taken from.
> Thus having a reduced MX1/MX2 combo won't help.  I'd still vote for
> a single (reduced) MX in the basic set and and optional (extended) 
> MX1/MX2 combo to replace it in an optional add-on package.

The MX1/MX2 combo does not sacrifice the plain or AMSTeX constraints
on math families. I have moved only newly invented symbols to MX2,
all the cmex-symbols and the few extra extensibles (smaller radicals
and wider accents) from cmsy/msam/msbm are in MX1. And the compatibility
argument is certainly not so important for newly invented symbols, since
these won't occur in old documents.  

That the extra fontdimens for extensibles are always taken from \fam3 is
true, but the same is true for the extra fontdimens for symbols which
always come from \fam2 and yet we have spread the symbols over 4 font
encodings. Is this really a problem ? Of course, the MX2-encoded font will
have to be designed to fit to the \fontdimens of its MX1-counterpart.

Keeping the split MX1/MX2 might also make it easier to achieve a nice
font table at least for xm[bf]s, since these fonts have enough free slots
in the variable area of the encoding to rearrange the slots. Putting
all glyphs from xm[bf]s in one encoding would make that more difficult.

[...]


> As I said, I personally don't care much about making erverything bold.
> In a lecture manuscript of 500+ pages of quantum mechanics I never
> ever needed such a weird thing as a bold \hbar.  Shudder!

So there are after all glyphs on which the physicists do not 
stick bars :-)

Matthias