TrueType fonts, TeX etc.

[John Smith]

On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, Robert J. Zydenbos wrote:

> Anshuman Pandey wrote (about TrueType and PK fonts, etc.):
>
> > Here's another suggestion: Move completely over to TeX and your
> > problems will be solved! Ask anyone... :-P
>
> I'm quite willing to believe you: TeX looks like a wonderful system. My
> one problem is, however, that I have not been able to install any font
> successfully except the standard Computer Modern font (I am using emTeX
> with OS/2) -- with which I can write practically anything I want in
> transliteration, using any diacritics I want, but I have not been able
> to fully install either other Latin fonts (the system refuses to produce
> accented European characters in these other fonts, although the Metafont
> files say that they are there) or, for instance, the ITRANS fonts.
>
> Is there any clever source of information available anywhere on how to
> install other TeX fonts? I have gone through all the documentation on
> TeX and Metafont that came with emTeX, but I still have not understood
> what I am doing wrong.

Post-1990 TeX has what is without doubt the best approach to the use of
special character sets available in any major system: virtual fonts. A
virtual font is a layer of software that "tames" a raw font and makes it
act as the user wishes. In use it "feels" just like a real font. Among the
advantages of this approach are that one can make virtual fonts
implementing special character sets for any real font one chooses: there
are no copyright hassles. There is a big collection of virtual fonts
implementing CSX for a wide range of underlying real fonts -- both
Computer Modern and PostScript -- available at the website given below:
follow the "fonts" link, then "csx-fonts" and finally "TeX".

EmTeX will certainly be capable of handling such fonts, but as I don't
have it on my machine I cannot tell you how to set it up. Usually all that
is necessary is (1) to put the TFM files in the usual directory for such
things, (2) to put the VF (virtual font) files in a specific directory,
and (3) to set an environment variable to point to that directory. If you
need further help, it would probably be sensible to post a query to
comp.text.tex. I think this group is not an appropriate place to take this
topic further.

John Smith

--
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