"WL" == Werner LEMBERG writes:

 WL> Am I right that the CM-super package tries to minimize the number
 WL> of used fonts?  If this is the most important goal, I fully agree
 WL> with such big fonts.

yes, the goal was to minimize the number and total size of font files.
each type1 font shares all common glyphs which are present in
supported encodings. e.g. latin letters, russian letters, accents and
a number of other glyphs which are present in more than one font
encoding are stored only once in type1 fonts.

 WL> Otherwise I wonder whether the Omega approach isn't probably
 WL> better: to have `glyph containers' with at most 256 characters
 WL> each -- fonts like omsela.pfb for Latin, omsecy.pfb for Cyrillic,
 WL> etc.

but, say, omsecy.pfb is only one shape? and EC fonts (and CM-Super
fonts) contain 29 multiple-size font shapes (and also 13 one-size
shapes) totalling 401 font files. so if we split each font to glyph
containers, we get not 401 font files, but much more (say, 401 for T1,
401 for TS1 and not smaller than 802 for cyrillic).

 >> * provide optimized but not hinted version (will be smaller)?

a note: e.g. sfrm1000.pfb hinted is ~139kb, while simply optimized but
not hinted is ~107kb.

 WL> Apropos smaller: How do you realize composite glyphs?  Do you use
 WL> Type 1 facilities to make the fonts smaller (via the AFM file)?
 WL> I can imagine that this can greatly reduce the size of the fonts.

not yet :) you mean to use the seac instruction to put accents?
(or is it sufficient to not include accented glyphs in pfb files at
all, but only define composites in the AFM files?)

 >> * add glyphs from T2D encoding

 WL> So T2D this has already been defined, hasn't it?  I haven't seen
 WL> any announcement on this list...

strictly speaking, A.Berdnikov defined T2D at Eurotex'99, and current
LH fonts (at ftp.vsu.ru/pub/tex/font-packs/lhfnt) support T2D, but not
in all shapes (and i guess that some font shapes are not even
planned). but the support for T2D was not yet included into the LaTeX
cyrillic bundle.

as A.Berdnikov himself agreed about T2D, it is not more than a demo
encoding, not suited to support Church-Slavonic language, but is to be
used only for a limited demonstration of Slavonic writing.

there is currently a very fruitful discussion on standardizing Ch-Sl
input method (so-called HIP) and font encoding in one of
russian-language mailing lists.

and T2D is not consistent in my opinion (it unfortunately defines some
variant glyphs which are not to be used in one font shape, e.g. both
"modern" and "old" variants of CYRN are present in the same font,
while this should obviously be the same glyph). That's why (and also
because of not full support for all font shapes) the glyphs from T2D
were not included into this first versio nof CM-Super fonts...

 >> * include glyphs from cbgreek ec-like fonts

 WL> * Include glyphs from the vnr family to cover Vietnamese.

 WL> * Include all missing glyphs from the Unicode extended Latin
 WL> sections.

added to TODO list in the README :)

 WL> BTW, I hope you have replaced the ugly `Euro' glyph from TS1 with
 WL> better looking variants from either the Marvosym or China2e
 WL> fonts...

 WL> Another BTW: Do you use AGL compliant glyph names?

yes, when possible (there are some glyphs which are neither present in
AGL nor in Unicode, not only in T2*/X2 encodings, but also in TS1).

Best,
v.