[XeTeX] \font syntax

[Hans Hagen]

Roland Kuhn wrote:
> Hi Jonathan!
> 
> On 31 Jul 2007, at 13:27, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> 
>>> but why not use the 'tfm search' as a fallback then? if a "name"
>>> cannot
>>> be resolved, search for a tfm one instead
>>
>> As I mentioned, XeTeX used to do this, but I'm not entirely convinced
>> it's a good idea. E.g., error messages may be less confusing if it's
>> clear which kind of font (or search) is being requested. But I'm
>> interested to hear what people think.... anyone else with opinions on
>> this?
>>
> I'm sure my vote does not carry as much weight as that of someone who 
> actually contributed code/etc., but I find your reasoning consistent and 
> matching my own expectations. Trying hard to guess what a user might 
> have wanted usually fails catastrophically. The only case known to me 
> which is at least debatable is Perl ;-) I think it is better to give a 
> clear error message than to magically "fix" user errors. The argument of 
> a robust interface is flawed exactly because TFM and OTF have different 
> behaviour per se.

well, i now do some fuzzy runtime lookup and leave it to the users to 
complain if they dislike the delay/overhead -)

Hans

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