[Pkg-fonts-devel] LaTeX font package naming convention

[Theppitak Karoonboonyanan]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Paul Wise <pabs at debian.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:31 PM, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan wrote:
>
>> My question is: is there a naming convention for LaTeX
>> font packages?
>>
>> For desktop font packages, it's in "fonts-<foundry>-<name>"
>> or "fonts-<name>" pattern. Should LaTeX fonts be in, say,
>> "fonts-latex-<foundry>" pattern?
>>
>> And should the package Section: be "fonts" or "tex"?
>> ("tex", I guess?)
>>
>> Note that I'm not splitting the package into families for LaTeX
>> fonts. Managing the font maps in sets is easier.
>
> Do fonts or font packages need to be different for TeX/LaTeX?

1) They are not accessible via fontconfig (except for XeTeX).
Rather, they are accessed via TeX font maps, with the help of
kpathsea indexing system.

The file locations are under /usr/share/texmf[-texlive] root dir,
not /usr/share/fonts.

2) They need special TFM (TeX Font Metrics) files for typesetting
with TeX, in addition to traditional Type 1 PFB and AFM files.
And in many cases, VF (Virtual Font) files are also required for
ligature/kerning handling.

The traditional PFB (splines) and AFM (metrics) are not used
by TeX typesetting, but are used by rendering tools like xdvi
viewer or dvi2ps/dvipdfm PS/PDF generators.

3) For LaTeX, FD (Font Description) files are also used for
referencing fonts from within LaTeX documents.

Regards,
-- 
Theppitak Karoonboonyanan
http://linux.thai.net/~thep/