[texhax] ?encoding? suffices in the TeX Live Adobe font TFMs

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:13:49 +0100 schrieb Philip TAYLOR:

>> You can do reencoding with vp/vf.  But you do not need to.  You can do
>> it purely by creating tfm's and pdftex.map entries (psfonts.map for
>> dvips).  This is preferable since it is one less file to get wrong, or
>> for people using obscure drivers to have trouble with.
 
> Thanks, Karl : I take your point, but surely using VP/VF is more
> likely to work regardless of the driver than using PdfTeX.map ?

No, it is the other way round: e.g. the xdv2pdf-driver of xetex (now
no longer the default driver) doesn't support virtual fonts. On the
other side every actual driver that can handle type1 fonts has
something similar to pdftex.map/psfonts.map and can do the
reencoding. And updmap nowadays generates all the relevant maps so
you only have to setup one map-file. 

If the real font (the pfb) contains all the symbols needed for the
TeX-encoding for which you want to set up the fonts, then you can do
the reencoding in the map file if you want. Virtual fonts are needed
when you want to do more, e.g. pull symbols from more then one font
or manipulate individual symbols. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer