Re: Documentation (was Re: [OS X TeX] Kanbun (漢文) and French...)

[Alain Schremmer]

On Jan 4, 2009, at 10:42 AM, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

>
> On lundi 05 janv. 09, at 00:25, cfrees at imapmail.org wrote:
>
>> Well, TNR is obviously not an option since it is not free.
>
> I only mentioned TNR because it was the font discussed in the quote  
> I used.
>
>> The default must be guaranteed to be available on all the  
>> platforms TeX runs on.
>
> No. It certainly must not. There are software ways to test which  
> platform the application is running on to allow for settings  
> specific to that platform. Which means you could have a Windows  
> default font, a Mac default font and if the platform is not  
> recognized for whatever reason, use the application embedded  
> default font.
>
>> The default choices have to work in a huge variety of situations.
>
> Indeed. And that is not the case with Computer Modern. Computer  
> Modern works for exactly 2 languages in the world. English, and a  
> minority language that uses exactly the same characters. _That_ is  
> very far from a "huge variety of situations".
>
>> These are not _MacTeX_ choices at all.
>
> Then what is the point of MacTex at all ? If MacTex is made for the  
> OSX, then I can't see how changing the TeX default font to use a  
> font provided by default by the OS is a problem ?

Exactly what I meant to say just a minute ago. (Must be the French in  
me.)

Grateful regards
--schremmer