Comment 4 for bug 7864

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:36:58 -0400
From: Matt Swift <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: even better solution

It seems to me an even better solution to the general problem of
various packages using various versions of a Courier font would be for
gs-* to require rather than merely recommend psfontmgr (i.e., defoma).
Then "(Fontmap.GS) .runlibfile" could be commented out by default in
/etc/gs-*/Fontmap, because defoma already handles including these
files in /var/lib/defoma/gs.d/dirs/fonts/Fontmap. If the defoma
scripts of the gs-* packages were to includes the Fontmap.GS files at
a lot "Priority" (I think it's a standard 20 now), then packages like
tetex-extra could do things like insert an appropriate hint file with
Courier fonts at a higher priority. And update-updmap could (by the
same mechanism) ensure that either the Adobe or the URW fonts had
higher priority. The result would be that tex, dvips, and gs would all
be using the SAME fonts, the ones with the highest priority in defoma.
I'm sure Acroread could be persuaded to join the group without much
trouble, either.

Defoma loses much of its benefit if it is not adopted universally and
developers have to accommodate their packagse to both defoma and
non-defoma installations.