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List:       xfree-fonts
Subject:    Re: Xft and MathML [Was: [Fonts]Xft for OpenGL]
From:       Juliusz Chroboczek <jec () dcs ! ed ! ac ! uk>
Date:       2002-06-25 17:14:14
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MK> These bracket components will hopefully *NOT* be missunderstood by
MK> the maths layout community as the proper way to typeset
MK> mathematical formulas. (*a feeling of horror crawls down my spine
MK> just from the thought*)

While I agree with you that such components have nothing to do in a
*text* encoding, it is not clear to me that there are better ways to
typeset mathematics than by assembling pieces of brackets, integrals,
etc.  Are you familiar with any math typesetting software that doesn't
work that way?

I am not aware of any software that uses the scheme that you outlined
(which is doubtless intelectually seducing).

MK> Free your mind from the awful way in which TeX plugs together its
MK> brackets from glyph components, which was dictated by the limitations of
MK> the 1970s phototypesetter which Knuth had to use when he designed the
MK> first incarnation of TeX.

What limitations?  Knuth was using a 1000dpi dumb typesetter with
every pixel individually addressable (up to toner viscosity, of
course).

MK> Any other solution just leads to the horrible entanglement between
MK> style sheet and exact alignment of bracket fragments in special
MK> maths fonts,

Hold on.  What you're pointing out here is a problem with bracket
components being present in a *text* encoding.  The previous posters
were discussing including them in a *glyph* encoding.  Your confusion
may be due to the abuse of Unicode as a glyph encoding.

MK> which makes it in TeX for example practically impossible to use
MK> for math typesetting any other font than those designed
MK> specifically for TeX.

That's completely unrelated.  The problem with TeX math fonts is that
TeX needs more math-specific metadata than is provided in any non-TeX
font format.  (In addition, the TeX-specific metadata is encoded in
TFM files in particularly baroque ways that only three people in the
universe fully understand.)

                                        Juliusz
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