Re: Removal of tfm-arphic
From: Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>
> Danai SAE-HAN (韓達耐) <danai.sae-han@edpnet.be> wrote:
>
> > I've been sniffing in the TeX related bugs, and I found that the
> > package tfm-arphic still has quite a few of them.
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=tfm-arphic
> >
> > My own latex-cjk-chinese-arphic package is actually a replacement of
> > these fonts.
>
> I wasn't aware of this, but this sounds like great news. However, there
> seem to be some issues left:
>
> - The filenames used are different. I'm not sure whether this is a
> problem (I guess those old files where used through TeX input files in
> cjk-latex, while TeX input files in our new cjk access the new
> files). But it deserves an explanation if we target this at etch.
Well, from CJK 4.6.0 onwards, Unicode support has improved *a lot*.
The TFM fonts are now primarily encoded in UTF-8 (the *u files), not
with ttf2tfm anymore but with Fontforge. Nowadays you can use one
and the same font for texts in UTF-8 as well as in locale-specific
encodings.
In order to keep support for the locale-specific encodings like Big5
for traditional Chinese, GB2312 for simplified Chinese or (S)JIS for
Japanese, the CJK scripts create virtual fonts which direct to the
correct glyphs in the UTF-8 encoded TFM files.
The *.enc fonts are only of any use if you want tricks with embedded
TTF in pdftex, something the upstream author strongly discourages.
The new Type1 fonts created by Fontforge, are much, much better than
the bitmap PK fonts created by ttf2tfm, so the upstream author advises
everyone not to install the .enc fonts, because it invariably messes
things up.
The *.tfm fonts have indeed other names. The old names in tfm-arphic
didn't work in the first place (cfr. bug #322010 [1] for which you,
Frank, made a patch). I tried to use for the new font files a more
consistent naming scheme. The included .fd font definition files
reflect all the changes I introduced, so the new fonts work without
problems with latex-cjk-chinese. Users won't have to change the font
names either: "bsmi" for instance stays "bsmi" when you use Big5 as
your encoding. It becomes "bsmiu" if you use UTF-8, but back then
there wasn't even UTF-8 support for the Arphic fonts [technically you
had, but you had to recreate the fonts all by yourself; a daunting
task I assure you].
The latex-cjk-chinese-arphic packages don't provide "*v??.tfm" files,
because vertical CJK writing can now be achieved in a completely
different way, that is using the "graphicx" package to rotate the
glyphs.
Mind you, the old way of using ttf2tfm still works, but it is
outdated. The only advantage that I can think of is its speed: you
only need a few seconds to create a fontset, while with Fontforge you
need an eternity (but you get nicer results, AND you won't have to use
MakeTeXPK anymore when viewing DVI files any more, which was a huge
waste of time back then).
The slower speed of Fontforge could be an annoyance if you wish to
create e.g. slanted versions of your CJK fonts, which is a breeze with
ttf2tfm but not so easy to do with Fontforge (well, you only have to
"skew" the fonts, but again, you'll need a lot of CPU power).
Slanted/italics CJK fonts look awful anyway; it's much better to
underline them (which isn't ugly for CJK, because none of the glyphs
touch the underline).
> - Which packages depend on the old ones? Strangely, I cannot find a
> single one for one example, tfm-arphic-bkai00mp:
>
> $ grep-dctrl -s Package \
> > \( -F Recommends tfm-arphic-bkai00mp \) \
> > -o \( -F Depends tfm-arphic-bkai00mp \) \
> > -o \( -F Suggests tfm-arphic-bkai00mp \) \
> > /var/lib/apt/lists/localhost\:9999_debian_dists_unstable_*Packages
> Package: ttf-arphic-bkai00mp
> $
Well, cjk-latex used to depend on the old tfm-arphic packages.
http://packages.debian.org/stable/tex/cjk-latex
No other package than cjk-latex depends on the tfm-arphic packages, so
I suppose not many people will have problems when it's disappeared.
> > So most, if not all of the bugs will disappear if I set a Replaces: in
> > latex-cjk-chinse-arphic. As a bonus, you won't need freetype1-tools
> > anymore.
> > Would you agree that this is a replacement?
> >
> > If so, then perhaps tfm-arphic could be purged now. Or I could upload
> > a new version of latex-cjk-chinese-arphic for after the new Debian
> > release, and meanwhile the tfm-arphic bugs could be ignored.
>
> cjk will go into testing today "thanks to manual hinting by vorlon".
> This is probably in order to be able to remove the old cjk-latex
> package.
Indeed. Steve's a great chap. ;)
> But this gives us the opportunity to do an upload with
> "Replaces/Conflicts/Provides" on tfm-arphic that is targetted at etch,
> and thereby really closing these bugs, in particular the two RC ones.
I'll do it at once. I only have to add a Replaces: line; strange that
I put a Conflicts: and Provides: line already. Perhaps back then I
thought that people would still find any use for tfm-arphic.
Silly me.
> I would be glad if you could prepare such a package as fast as possible
> - ideally so fast that I can compile it this weekend (it's the one that
> takes hours, isn't it?)
Unfortunately it is. I'll work on it tonight in order to upload a new
version tomorrow. I'll keep you updated. Do you want it to have a
"medium" urgency?
> > tfm-arphic bugs that can almost certainly be closed manually or merged
> > with others:
>
> Have you already added these comments to the respective bug logs? That
> would be very good.
Not yet; I wrote these things on the spur of the moment. I'll do it
tonight or tomorrow.
Cheers!
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=322010
Danai SAE-HAN
韓達耐
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