To: CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru
Subject: Re: *complete* WLCY etc
References: <list-1171887@vsu.ru>
From: Vladimir Volovich <vvv@vvv.vsu.ru>
Date: 19 Dec 1999 12:26:55 +0300
In-Reply-To: Laurent Siebenmann's message of "Sun, 19 Dec 1999 03:35:13 +0100"
Message-ID: <m3r9gjth5s.fsf@vvv.vsu.ru>
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"LS" == Laurent Siebenmann writes:

 LS> You might announce your alpha postings on the tex-fonts list
 LS> since it is in the west that WN/WL are most used.

maybe you can do this announce better, because you can explain the
importance of WLCY fonts to west people better than i. :)

 LS> With no change in kern/ligs the AMS has given consent in
 LS> advance!

that would be nice.

 LS> (2) As for the "mistakes" in my friend Malyshev's "t2" encoding,
 LS> I understand they are not mistakes at all, but a conscious effort
 LS> to serve almost everyone with the few Type1 fonts we have
 LS> today. (And T2 is no standard, just T2A, T2B, T2C ;=)

 LS> With his t2: a) Russian and Ukranian users can conform to T2A b)
 LS> Russian users conform to CP1251

The same is valid for T2A. With T2A:
a) Russian and Ukranian users can conform to T2A
b) Russian users conform to CP1251
:-)

so there is really no need to create yet another incompatible and
unsupported encoding (with illegal name: encodings started with T are
reserved as standard LaTeX encoding; but T2 is not registered as such;
only T2A, T2B, T2C and yet-to-come T2D).

 LS> Your standard input macros work for Russian and Ukranian,
 LS> although they may give nonsense beyond.

could you please elaborate?

 LS> If one uses T2A encoded "la" fonts in TeX, then one can convert
 LS> to good vectorial PS and PDF output involving these type 1 fonts
 LS> --- by trivial substitutions using ".map" files.

no. if the encoding in Malyshev's fonts differs from standard T2A
encoding, then there will be unpredictable errors and mess-ups when
one will try to convert to vectorial PS/PDF output by substituting
TeX's internal standard T2A encoding with a different encoding used in
Malyshev's fonts.

this substitution may work reliably on some documents which happen to
use glyphs which are encoded identically in both T2A and in Malyshev's
fonts, but it will generally fail for anything more general.

so, distributing fonts which encoding differs from standard encoding
and claiming that they can serve as a replacement for standard
encoding is a misleading.

though, one needs to perform a check on current version of Malyshev's
fonts to find out how much the differences in their encoding are. if
there are any non-standard changes/replacements/additions WRT the
standard T2A in those fonts, then they definitely should not be used.

 LS> (Maybe I am a bit optimistic here and different "t2" metrics are
 LS> needed for really good typography.  Has anyone tested?)

i think that metrics (do you mean kerning?) in his fonts are
compatible with shapes of cmcyr fonts, so that is okay provided that
cmcyr have good kerning.

	Best regards, -- Vladimir.