Re: TeX fonts

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org> writes:

> This error message may have given me the thought to try cmr17 instead
> of CMR17, which does work (although it looks almost as bad as cmr10),
> but it still doesn't provide any hints towards finding out what fonts
> are available (and usable) on my system.  Where is that information?

I'd suggest starting with the LaTeX Companion and LaTeX Graphics
Companion.  Even though they're about LaTeX, they should give enough
information to piece together how fonts work, what files are involved,
and where to get them.  At a minimum, you'll need to know about tfms,
vfs, dvips's config.ps and *.map files....

You might also try finding the fontinst documentation, as that
describes things better than any other online documentation.  Check
out /usr/share/doc/texmf/fontinst/base/fontinst.dvi.gz .

The TeX font architecture is quite complex and is composed of many
pieces provided by different programs, documented in different
places.  The books above are the best resources I've found in figuring
out how they all fit together, though I've heard that TeX Unbound is
also a good reference.

I'd also recommend checking out comp.text.tex.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?