>> So, back to Werner's .foundry, I like the idea but would like a way >> for gropdf to take advantage of the inbuilt Adobe versions of fonts >> when they are available. > > The URW fonts are intended to be used as a transparent fallback for > the base fonts, so I think that groff should always use, e.g., the > font name /Times-Italic, and only the program that actually has to > access the font file should automatically map this to > /NimbusRomNo9L-ReguItal if the former cannot be found.
I strongly disagree. Compared to the Adobe standard fonts, the URW fonts have both a different shape and a greatly extended glyph reportoire. `Accidentally', they have (almost) the same metrics as the Adobe standard fonts, making it possible to use them as fall-back fonts. However, from a typographical point of view, URW and Adobe fonts are definitely different. In other words, the fallback should *not* happen within groff but at a later stage, as it is done currently with grops. gropdf should support both approaches, this is, relying on the non-embedded base fonts or using the embedded URW stuff. Using something like the proposed `.foundry' request it would be trivial to switch between those different foundries. Werner