Re: Big Bag o' Questions

[Colin Klipsch]

Greetings Uwe.  Thanks for responding so quickly.

> > (3) I want to propose that a collection of good quality freeware &
> >     shareware PostScript fonts be added to Lout, perhaps as a
> >     supplemental download package.

> This is so extremely easy to add new fonts, that it hardly worth a
> separate download package.  Adding them to the base distribution is
> not very kosher either.

I'm not sure I'd use the phrase "extremely easy".  If you're just
using pre-existing AFM files, then yes, it's quite easy to add the
_fontdef_ declarations yourself.  But, if you're embedding fonts
into your PostScript output, then there's some trickery involved that
took me a few weeks of experimentation to get right.

Speaking of that ... why does @PrependGraphic complain if the file
you're prepending doesn't start with a "%%BeginResource" line?  This
seems kvetchy to me.  Also, "PrependGraphic", as a name, is a bit
misleading; it really prepends _any_ chunk of PostScript code, not
just images.  Perhaps it should be renamed "PrependResource" or
"PrependFile" or even just "Prepend".

Also, why does _fontdef_ require me to give it both the AFM file _and_
the font's PostScript name?  The font's name is _in_ the AFM file!  If
Lout is parsing the AFM file (to get the metric information I
presume), then it should also go ahead and note the "FontName" line
while doing so.

Well, that's what I think anyway... ;)

> In fact I would prefer to cut down he list of AFMs distributed with
> Lout to be cut down to the base 14 fonts, guaranteed to be present in
> all PostScript systems.  At least this will eliminate questions like
> "Why my @InitialFont { Palatino Base 12p } produces strangely looking
> documents?" because using a nonstandard font will reuqire a conscious
> action from a user.

I sympathize with this point, but I wouldn't wish to limit Lout to the
lowest common denominator.  And I'll admit, I was surprised to see
fonts like Bookman in the base distribution; I didn't think this
font, or several of the others, were universally available.

However, I still think it makes sense to supply an _expansion_ set of
fonts as a supplemental package, much like the "Eiffel" or "equations"
packages that already exist.  (And, much like the expansion packages
that exist for TeX.)  Again, since the number of free _and_ good
quality PostScript fonts is fairly small, such a package could be kept
concise and manageable.  I have in mind at least the following fonts
to start with:

    Adobe Utopia
    Bitstream Charter
    Bakoma CM fonts
    URW Antiqua & Grotesk   (all available on CTAN)

    AdobeSerifMM
    AdobeSansMM
    Arial
    Times New Roman         (bundled with Acrobat Reader)

And then maybe:

    Goudy Sans   (http://www.fontsite.com/Pages/FFDownloads.html)
    Cuala Caslon  (http://www.vintagetype.com/freestuff/)

There are also the new core fonts provided in PS Level 3 devices:

    Albertus
    Bodoni
    Copperplate Gothic
    Letter Gothic
    Optima
    (many others)

... but that's probably getting too ambitious for now.

For all of these fonts, at least the AFM files would be provided,
along with Lout setup files to access them.  (Some of the above also
have PFA/B files freely available.)  It would be up to the user
whether to bother with the extra fonts or not -- the fact that they
require separate "include" files would mark them as non-standard.
This should somewhat mollify user complaints about undefined fonts on
their target device.

Having done a lot of this work myself already, I'd like to share it
with others.  My feeling is that it would help "sell" Lout to a wider
audience.  Again, I'm not proposing to contaminate the base Lout
distribution with oodles of extra fonts; I agree this wouldn't be
kosher.  The idea here is to provide an optional download package that
users can take or ignore as desired.

> > (4) Along the same lines, I'd like to push for Multiple Master font
> >     support, specifically the use of "optical scaling" at different
> >     point sizes.
> [...]
> >     I can imagine that adding this feature would mean major changes to
> >     Lout's internal workings.

> Exactly.

I'm inferring that that's a strong "NO".   ;)

> > (6) What's the easiest way to _outdent_ all my section headers?
> >     Or perhaps equivalently, to indent all section text?

> Use the overlapping trick discussed recently:

>   @SectionHeadingFormat { |0io 2f @HShift { number @DotSep title } }

Thanks for that.

> >     It would be nice to have a text "wrap-around" feature ...

> Generic flow-around (L-shaped paragraphs) is impossible in Lout, but
> one can perhaps adapt @DropCap* symbols to do flowing semi-manually
> (one will need to specify the size of the "window").

That's unfortunate.  What sort of impossibility is it do you think?
Permanent or temporary?

> >     _pdfmark_ operator that Distiller obeys to generate hypertext
> >     links, bookmarks, and so on:

> At the bottom of "whatsnew" file:

> | Things that ought to be done but haven't been done yet
> |    
> |     pfmark in PostScript output

Oops, sorry I missed that.

Thanks much for your help and insights.


-- Colin K.