[OS X TeX] Re: OS X TeX] TeX and Illustrator Fonts -- CMR Works and Lucida doesn't

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Sun May 8 07:25:48 EDT 2005


Le 8 mai 05 à 02:34, Gordon Sick a écrit :

> 3.    Blue Sky also distributes Lucida and I wonder if they  
> distribute them in a way that works like CMR (and does't have the  
> problem). Moreover, I noticed on BSR's website a note that they had  
> talked with Apple about the encoding problem and that the encoding  
> problem might be fixed with Tiger.

The Lucida fonts on the BSR disks were distributed in several  
different encodings, but that affected screen fonts and metrics  
suitcases only, not the PS fonts themselves which are the only  
component reused by gwTeX IIRC (the metrics and accompanying files  
being already included in teTeX and hence in gwTeX).

Specifically, here are the several variants on my BSR Lucida font  
floppies (from 1995 for the basic set, and 1996 for the expert set):


Math fonts
==========

There are two alternate screen font suitcases "LucidaNewMath TeX  
Screen" and "LucidaNewMath Ord Screen". The first must be used if  
you're only using the fonts with TeX, and the second if you're using  
them with other applications. The difference lies in the ways the  
character codes 0-31 are handled, and one character with a long  
descender is handled. From one of the ReadMe files:

> Macintosh applications - other than implementations of TeX - cannot
> deal with character codes in the range 0 - 31 (for one thing, these
> cannot be generated from the keyboard).  The screen fonts for
> non-TeX use do not include these character codes.  Note that
> nothing is lost, since the same character shapes ARE accessible
> higher up: all characters in the range 0 - 31 are repeated
> somewhere in the range 161 - 170 or 173 - 195.
>
> (Also, some Macintosh applications - such as PopChar - cannot deal  
> with
> characters that have negative widths.  For this reason the screen
> fonts for non-TeX use to not include character codes 252 - 255).

and later:

> One of the math fonts, LucidaNewMath-Symbol, has a rather long
> descender in the TeX version of the screen font, which may affect
> line spacing in some applications.  A more reasonable descender is
> specified in the `ordinary' versions of the screen fonts
> (`LucidaNewMath Ord Screen').
>
> This makes it more convenient to use LucidaNewMath-Symbol with
> applications other than TeX. The following describes this in more  
> detail:
>
> Technical Details:
> -----------------
>
> Two of the math fonts, LucidaNewMath-Arrows and LucidaNewMath-Italic
> have ascenders and descenders typical of text fonts, and so
> characters from these fonts can be freely mixed with ordinary text.
> At the other end of the spectrum, LucidaNewMath-Extension, is
> specialized to provide very large delimiters, and so has very large
> descenders.  Such large descenders, when specified in the screen
> font, will cause a large increases in leading (line spacing) in many
> applications, if character from this font are mixed with ordinary
> text.
>
> LucidaNewMath-Symbol is a borderline case, in that just a single
> character (`radical', code position 112) has a very large descender.
> To properly render this character - used for square root in TeX - a
> correspondingly large descender has to be specified in the screen
> font.  When the fonts are used with applications other than TeX,
> however, a screen font can be used that ignores this one exceptional
> character and sets the descender to a value more in line with typical
> text fonts.  That way characters from LucidaNewMath-Symbol can be
> mixed freely with ordinary text also.


Text fonts
==========

There are two alternate font metrics suitcases "LucidaBright Mac  
Metrics" and "LucidaBright CM Metrics". The first one must be used  
with versions of Textures including and after 1.6, and the second  
with versions before 1.6. From another ReadMe:

> `LucidaBright CM Metrics' is a TeXtures metric file set up for
> use of the LucidaBright text fonts with Textures' `TeX text' encoding
> (which mimics the way the CM text fonts are laid out). This metric
> file is provided primarily for use with versions of Textures *before*
> Textures 1.6 (this Metrics file for the text fonts was the default for
> use with earlier versions of Textures).
>
> The `Lucida Mac Metrics' file in the 'Metrics File' folder is instead
> set up to use the new 'MacintoshStandard' encoding supported by
> Textures 1.6. We recommend using that, since it makes many more
> characters available, including the accented characters.


However, I'm providing these details for info only, as I don't think  
they are involved when using the Lucida fonts with gwTeX. Having only  
Illustrator 10, I can't be of more help.

Bruno Voisin--------------------- Info ---------------------
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