cm-super (was: test for t1lib version fails)

>>>>> "Michail" == Michail Vidiassov <[email protected]> writes:

    > Dear Thomas and All, On Sat, 15 May 2004, Thomas Esser wrote:

    >> > Why cm-super fonts package is not included?
    >> 
    >> It would almost double the size of the compressed texmf
    >> tarball.  And: the lm fonts are included. They are not
    >> autotraced and of a better quality. They don't contain as many
    >> glyphs, but give them a chance (\usepackage{lmodern}). Maybe,
    >> that's just what you need...
    >> 

    > Why not to treat it as some commercial font packs - 

There is one huge difference between cm-super and commercial fonts:
cm-super.tar.gz already has a TDS-compliant directory structure, while
many vendors of commercial fonts have their own directory standard
which makes installation very painful.  Even worse, many files have to
be renamed.

    > leave out
    > the pfb font files, but include the necessary support files,
    > commented out entries in config files and directories with short
    > files of installation instructions?

This doesn't make things much easier.  I, for instance, just unpacked
cm-super.tar.gz and added the cm-super tree to $TEXMF in texmf.cnf
(as an additional texmf tree) and updated updmap.cnf.

This is not more difficult than what you propose, one has to read the
README anyway.  And adding the entries to updmap.cnf is quite
convenient if you say "ls -1 *.map" and then use the copy-and-paste
facility provided by the X window system. 

I must admit that there had been a small change in the TDS standard
but I suppose that future versions of cm-super will take this into
account.

Thomas already explained why they are not supported.

I totally agree with him.  cm-super are autotraced fonts.  They are
not perfect.  TeXtrace has problems to detect corners with angles
slightly different from 180 degrees and replaces them by shallow
curves. 

Autotraced fonts are good if there is nothing better.  A high quality
font cannot be created automatically from a bitmap font.  A good font
always requires manual interaction.  Producing a high quality font is
extremely time consuming.

When cm-super had been made, nobody even dreamed that there will be
something better in the future.

But Boguslaw Jackowski already did the impossible.  His "Latin Modern"
typeface family depends on "Computer Modern" and supports all latin
languages except Vietnamese (I hope that Vietnamese will follow soon).
You can be sure that every glyph has been designed with care, there
are always two shapes of each accent, one for lowercase and one for
uppercase letters, for instance.

The lm fonts has been presented to Donald Knuth and Hermann Zapf (the
greatest font designer since Claude Garamond) for approval.

The reason I do not want support for cm-super in teTeX is that it
leads to confusion.  Most people do not know about the difference.
I don't see any good reason not to use Latin Modern.  But if cm-super
is made available, some people might use it, and this would lead to
larger files and less quality.

Let us convince people to use Latin Modern instead.  It's absolutely
the best.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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