\title{New PostScript font metrics for \protect\LaTeX}
\author{Sebastian Rahtz}
\begin{Article}
Over the last 9 months, a group of people have been working on a
revamp of \TeX\ font metrics for PostScript fonts. We are now ready
(finally!) to release this, together with a new release of the
PSNFSS package for \LaTeXe, and a new version of the Karl Berry font-naming
scheme. The maintainers of PSNFSS, \emph{fontinst}, \emph{web2c}, and 
\emph{dvips} all urge
you to start using this new setup, so that all the bothersome variants
can be abolished by the end of the year.

The entire distribution is on the CTAN hosts in
\texttt{fonts/psfonts.beta}. Its big --- don't pull all the files on spec!
Get what you need. Prepackaged sets for Textures users are also available.

These files will replace both the \LaTeX\ PSNFSS (currently on CTAN in
\texttt{fonts/metrics}) and the font metrics distributed with dvips.
Both of these packages contained virtual fonts which more or less
mimicked the original \TeX\ text encoding, and (in the case of PSNFSS)
the Cork encoding.  However, the two packages used different base
fonts, thus making previewing painful (and wasting disk space).  Now,
everything uses a single base font in a new encoding named 8r (see
\texttt{tools/8r.enc} or \texttt{tools/8r.etx}).

This new base encoding is \emph{not} Adobe Standard Encoding, because that
does not provide access to all of the 228 characters normally supplied
with a Type 1 font.  Therefore, you must use a DVI-to-PostScript driver
which can perform reencoding, such as dvips(k), Y\&Y's drivers, OzTeX,
Textures etc.

We are still contemplating whether the base encoding should be the
current one (mostly compatible with Windows), the texnansi encoding
promulgated by Y\&Y (see \texttt{tools/texnansi.vec}), or something else.
Comments are welcome.

Aside from the base font, there are other small changes in the new
fonts.  For the Cork-encoded fonts, the stretch and shrink of the
interword spacing has been changed; this will almost certainly
change again for the final release, and we welcome comments.
  For the dvips fonts, the positions
of the preaccented characters have been fixed (e.g., Aring is at the
same position in every font).  Therefore, the font checksums are
different.  The actual character dimensions, however, remain unchanged.

The new fonts (mostly) have new names!  You can get the new fontname
distribution from \texttt{ftp.cs.umb.edu} in
\texttt{private/tex/fontname-*.tar.gz or} in the \texttt{tools/}
subdirectory of this distribution.

This distribution includes support the standard 35 fonts, various freely
available fonts (with Type1 sources), and many commercial-only fonts (no
Type1s).  Smallcaps and obliqued versions are available in bold and
normal variants, where applicable.  All fonts have ligatures and
kerning (no ``raw'' fonts); therefore, even the base fonts can be
used for real typesetting. An experimental support is provided in
PSNFSS for this.

We built these fonts using both \emph{fontinst} and \emph{afm2tfm}
(and other
utilities).  Both required changes, which will be merged into the next
releases. 
The changes to \emph{fontinst} are extensive, and if you are not
confident you understand them, please wait until the author finds time
to merge them into a complete new release later this year.

\begin{quote}
\emph{Primary perpetrators:} Sebastian Rahtz, Alan Jeffrey, Karl
Berry.\\ \emph{Chief Tester and Bugfinder:} Constantin Kahn.\\
\emph{Aiders and abettors:} Tom Rokicki, Ciar\'an \'O Duibh\'{\i}n,
Pierre MacKay, Rob Hutchings, Berthold Horn, Damian Cugley.
\end{quote}
Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions
to \texttt{tex-fonts@math.utah.edu}.  (Email 
\texttt{tex-fonts-request@math.utah.edu} to
join the list.)
\end{Article}