STIX fonts are so near
Juhapekka Tolvanen
"Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
Need I say more?
--
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * http colon slash slash iki dot fi slash juhtolv
"S teki. S teki. S teki. S wo kakusei. S teki. S teki. S teki. S wo umekome.
S teki. S teki. S teki. M wo setsudan. S teki. S teki. Puratonikku wo
hajimemashou." Dir en grey
Ulrich M. Schwarz
> http://www.stixfonts.org/
>
> "Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
>
> Need I say more?
Doesn't say which year, though. ;)
Ulrich
Steven Endres
news:cad.4726d...@absatzen.de...
And (La)TeX support will not be ready. I asked.
Steven
Will Robertson
Depending on how they are releasing the fonts, they should work with a
new package I've prepared for XeTeX+LaTeX. Still needs finishing up,
though...I've kind of been waiting for the STIX fonts since the MS-
only Cambria Math is the only other unicode maths font in existence at
the moment.
Will
Simon Spiegel
This year! Unbelievable, they're actually available for download! Who
would have thoght ...
simon
Joseph Wright
wrote:
> On 2007-10-30 07:56:49 +0100, "Ulrich M. Schwarz" <brother...@gmx.net> said:
>
> > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:31:53 +0200, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
>
> >>http://www.stixfonts.org/
>
> >> "Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
>
> >> Need I say more?
>
> > Doesn't say which year, though. ;)
>
> This year! Unbelievable, they're actually available for download! Who
> would have thoght ...
>
> simon
Hurrah. Now, how do I search through the list of glyphs, so I can see
if they've done a standard state symbol!
Joseph Wright
Juhapekka Tolvanen
Juhapekka Tolvanen <SNAFU....@iki.fi.FUBAR.invalid> writes:
> http://www.stixfonts.org/
>
> "Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
Okay. Now those beta fonts are there! Get them, while they are hot!
as...@triumf.ca
wrote:
> if they've done a standard state symbol
Aside: which standard-state symbol do you require? Superscript
circle, or degree, or superscript zero, or superscript crossed circle?
\providecommand\barcirc{\mathpalette\@barred\circ}
\def\@barred#1#2{\ooalign{\hfil$#1-$\hfil\cr\hfil$#1#2$\hfil\cr}}
\newcommand\stst{^{\protect\barcirc}}
Donald Arseneau as...@triumf.ca
Joseph Wright
I've created one using the \varnothing symbol from the AMS fonts (see
the chemstyle package). However, this is clearly a poor situation.
It's not like the symbol has been in use for 100 years ...
Joseph Wright
Michael Zedler
>
> Juhapekka Tolvanen <SNAFU....@iki.fi.FUBAR.invalid> writes:
>
>> http://www.stixfonts.org/
>>
>> "Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
>
> Okay. Now those beta fonts are there! Get them, while they are hot!
yes. They don't incorporate any opentype features (gpos/gsub). Not even
for ligatures. No stylistic stylesets for fraktur/sans.
Michael
Herbert Schulz
Will Robertson <wsp...@gmail.com> wrote:
Howdy,
So that's what you've been doing with all your free time! :-)
Looking forward to playing with STIX and XeLaTeX!
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
Will Robertson
>
> yes. They don't incorporate any opentype features (gpos/gsub). Not even
> for ligatures. No stylistic stylesets for fraktur/sans.
I haven't had a chance to look at them yet.
Are you saying they *don't* have the now-standard OpenType features
for maths that Cambria Math uses?
(I could understand no OpenType text features if the font is entirely
targetted towards maths. With the TIPA symbols it contains, however, I
don't think that's the case.)
I don't really have an issue with not including stylistic set support
to access the extended maths alphabets since those characters have
their own unicode code points in Plane 1. But I can see why people
think it's a good idea.
Will
Will Robertson
>
> Are you saying they *don't* have the now-standard OpenType features
> for maths that Cambria Math uses?
They certainly don't. They're unusable right now in both Microsoft
Word and XeTeX.
Will
Malte Rosenau
Quite embarrassing given that the whole bunch of fonts did
cost a mere million (mostly labor costs according to some
PowerPoint slide I found on the Internet). I wonder if it's
worth the trouble giving them some feedback?
Robin Fairbairns
it's possible (given that they started _so_ long ago) that they
expected these otf files to be no more than containers for a bunch of
type 1 fonts, each, and didn't therefore pay enough attention to the
way things have developed.
it's impressive, though, that the stuff fails for m$ as well as for
tex. i've come to expect that things that were originally tex-y, drift
away because they've been adapted for wurrrd.
someone (not me -- i don't really understand the issues, so couldn't
deal with the followups) really should ask how they expect to use
them, given that they're pretty much unusable as they stand.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Will Robertson
> Quite embarrassing given that the whole bunch of fonts did
> cost a mere million (mostly labor costs according to some
> PowerPoint slide I found on the Internet).
They gave that figure in the press release too.
> I wonder if it's
> worth the trouble giving them some feedback?
I sent them an email; don't know if anything will come of it. On the
one hand, they did update the license after people in the TeX
community objected that it was nowhere near free enough for TeXLive.
Will
Robin Fairbairns
>On Nov 2, 6:19 am, Malte Rosenau <mros...@gwdg.de> wrote:
>> Quite embarrassing given that the whole bunch of fonts did
>> cost a mere million (mostly labor costs according to some
>> PowerPoint slide I found on the Internet).
>
>They gave that figure in the press release too.
>
>> I wonder if it's
>> worth the trouble giving them some feedback?
>
>I sent them an email; don't know if anything will come of it.
well, nothing was going to come of it if you hadn't sent the mail, for
sure. you did the right thing.
>On the
>one hand, they did update the license after people in the TeX
>community objected that it was nowhere near free enough for TeXLive.
afaict, i can't put the fonts on ctan, either. i would love to be
proved wrong.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Will Robertson
>
> >On the
> >one hand, they did update the license after people in the TeX
> >community objected that it was nowhere near free enough for TeXLive.
>
> afaict, i can't put the fonts on ctan, either. i would love to be
> proved wrong.
Oh, they've since updated the licence and it's now equivalent (if I
recall correctly) to the SIL open font licence. But obviously not the
same, because they wanted to write it themselves.
Will
Will Robertson
>
> it's possible (given that they started _so_ long ago) that they
> expected these otf files to be no more than containers for a bunch of
> type 1 fonts, each, and didn't therefore pay enough attention to the
> way things have developed.
I think that's highly probably.
> it's impressive, though, that the stuff fails for m$ as well as for
> tex. i've come to expect that things that were originally tex-y, drift
> away because they've been adapted for wurrrd.
I suppose I exaggerated earlier. In as much as the fonts are unicode-
encoded and contain the correct characters, you'd be able to do a
decent enough job with a lot of fiddling. But things like auto-sizing
delimiters and operators, and correctly placed subscripts and
superscripts have got no support.
(Also, there don't appear to be optical sizes :( How unfortunate)
Will
Jose Geraldo
you, I just think my voice may be heard as something the common guys
may be thinking.
I won't give STIX feedback. I won't probably even use them any soon.
In fact I won't even give them a damn if they don't do something to
seriously convince me.
I am VERY disappointed with STIX fonts. So, what? After years of
obscure development, releasing meagre details about what they were
supposed to be or look like, after a lot of money spent, what do we
have? Another Times look-alike? Did I wait for so long to see an
enhanced mathptmx? What do STIX fonts have that makes them worth for
anyone who's not considering writing a long thesis full of maths and
arcane diagrams and formulae? I mean, what do they have to make them
the best choice for a casual text document containing non-math (my
case) or just ordinary math?
Frankly I expected STIX fonts to have some character of their own.
Something to let people seeing documents typeset in it say: "hey, this
is STIX". Instead people will say it's another Times New Roman ripoff
(because average people don't know that math is drawn with fonts).
Unfortunately, STIX don's have ANY character. No inspiration
whatsoever.
And they don't work with xetex, which I will be using for everything
from now on.
Too much fireworks for too unimportant a holiday.
Karl Berry
neither Debian nor GNU have officially looked at it). It is not
equivalent to, or compatible with, the OFL (or any other license).
I don't know if the beta fonts have a different license than what I
saw, can't download right now.
As for looking like Times Roman: that was entirely intentional, and it
was what the STIX members could agree on. Personally I don't think it
is a bad decision.
karl
Will Robertson
> I am VERY disappointed with STIX fonts.
Okay, there are reasons to knock the stix project but those listed
above are not valid, in my opinion. First and foremost, they collected
every single known maths character known to them and organised for
those characters to be included in unicode.
Secondly, they drew them all. Do not for a second underestimate how
long this would take and how difficult the task would have been.
Before now, maths typesetting has been a hodge-podge of collected
letters and symbols; there has never been an authoritative and
consistent rendering in a single font for every maths character known.
Now, as far as Times goes: it's the most widely used font in the world
for technical publication. Countless papers are published every year
using this font and the STIX fonts have been designed to fit to the
needs of the publishers. They were the ones behind it, after all.
The ONLY reason I'm disappointed with the stix fonts today is that
they don't conform to the OpenType standard for maths. Also, it's not
the end of the world -- if they don't do it the licence is permissible
enough for someone else to come along and bundle up the fonts
correctly.
If the stix project's job was to catalogue every maths character glyph
known to the western world and produce a consistent rendering of every
one, they've done a remarkable job and deserve praise.
If their aim was to produce a font that will be useful for end users
like you and me, they've thus far not achieved it, in my opinion.
Will
Will Robertson
> But things like auto-sizing
> delimiters and operators, and correctly placed subscripts and
> superscripts have got no support.
I might actually be totally wrong here.
More investigation is required!
W
Roy
but since open type for STIX is all we've got ...
I had no success with the STIX fonts on MS Word. I hope the right
answer is I've done something stupid. This what happened & what I sent
to STIX. Has anybody gotten them to work?
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Standard, up to date Windows XP
Standard, up to date MS Word 2003
Standard font install in control panel font folder. "Install new
fonts".
Both at home and at work.
Must be considered a disaster. Don't know what I could have done
wrong.
In Word font window, STIX fonts have a "printer" icon (as opposed to
True Type or Open Type).
Same as actual printer resident fonts. Open Type icon in control panel
font folder.
Line spacing is double. Correctable ONLY by "Linespacing: Exactly"
Not really sure what is displayed. Doubt that it is STIX. Text looks
weak and unclear. An acid test is the distinctive lower case italic
"z" for PS Times vs. PCL Times New Roman. Times New Roman version is
displayed.
Printing to Xerox PS Printer ("True" Adobe) totally failed. Blank
sheet and PS error.
Printing to PCL (both HP and Xerox) "worked" (sort of). Same as
display. Double spaced, weak, and unclear with wrong lower case italic
"z".
This is the most common configuration in the known universe.
Will Robertson
But it is Word 2007 that handles unicode maths. Sometimes you just
have to upgrade if you want the features...
Will
Robin Fairbairns
indeed, m$ add the features in order to get the upgrade income. all
very reasonable (there are a finite number of computers in the world,
so without upgrading there would be no income, beyond a certain
point).
of course, it's thinking like that, that gives us incompletely-
thought-out systems like vista. but then, things like vista and
preposterously fast chips like intel core duo feed off one another:
you couldn't have vista without the chips[*], but intel's business
model must surely depend at least in part on the ever-increasing
demand for resources, from m$.
[*] my boss told me not even to think of using a cast-off computer
when i started working on vista: all previous changes of os were put
on $currentgeneration-1 hardware. (this is justifiable since i don't
really do much windows development...)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Roy Bethel
on Word 2003. (?) They should make that clear.
But, I've got the Office 2007 compatibility pack which has MS's latest
fonts (Cambria, etc.), and they work just fine. They are supposed to be
Unicode. The example that failed was pure plain text, no symbols. Maybe its
a Open Type/Type 1 vs. a Open Type/True Type thing.
"Will Robertson" <wsp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1194055587....@e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
tsy
> I had no success with the STIX fonts on MS Word. I hope the right
> answer is I've done something stupid. This what happened & what I sent
> to STIX. Has anybody gotten them to work?
> Line spacing is double. Correctable ONLY by "Linespacing: Exactly"
can not produce valid pdf from both MS Word and OpenOffice document.
xelatex+STIXGeneral+mathptmx works for me.
xelatex+STIXGeneral+txfonts can not handle bold math.
William F Hammond
> . . .
> of course, it's thinking like that, that gives us incompletely-
> thought-out systems like vista. but then, things like vista and
> preposterously fast chips like intel core duo feed off one another:
> you couldn't have vista without the chips[*], but intel's business
> model must surely depend at least in part on the ever-increasing
> demand for resources, from m$.
Are you saying that it's designed to enhance global warming? :-)
More seriously, my understanding is that stix is planning a (probably
beta) release of latex fonts by the end of 2007. The present beta
release is explicitly marked not suitable for LaTeX.
Cheers.
-- Bill
Robin Fairbairns
>rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>> . . .
>> of course, it's thinking like that, that gives us incompletely-
>> thought-out systems like vista. but then, things like vista and
>> preposterously fast chips like intel core duo feed off one another:
>> you couldn't have vista without the chips[*], but intel's business
>> model must surely depend at least in part on the ever-increasing
>> demand for resources, from m$.
>
>Are you saying that it's designed to enhance global warming? :-)
oddly, intel's latest designs achieve what they do with less power
consumption than the previous generation.
i doubt that was part of m$'s imperative, but intel probably had to do
it to prevent the chips melting down.
>More seriously, my understanding is that stix is planning a (probably
>beta) release of latex fonts by the end of 2007. The present beta
>release is explicitly marked not suitable for LaTeX.
really? where?
(says the man who *always* misses things on web sites...)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Harald Hanche-Olsen
Stixfonts.org never mentions LaTeX, according to google. It does
mention TeX, however, on the front page even:
http://www.stixfonts.org/
Regrettably, this beta test will not include TeX support. We expect
the TeX package to be ready for beta test near the end of this year.
Also
http://www.stixfonts.org/news.html
September 7, 2006:
[...] There will be a beta test of the TeX package, but that release
will follow the OpenType beta test by at least 60 days. (Additional
time will be required to re-package the fonts as Type1 and to
perform the necessary changes to support TeX. Finally, we expect to
release the proposed final text of the user license agreement by the
end of September.
That "at least 60 days" phrase sounds ominous, given the way things
have gone with the STIX fonts project and its deadlines up to now.
I'm afraid it will be another year or more.
--
* Harald Hanche-Olsen <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
-- Bertrand Russell
Robin Fairbairns
well yes. and of course, if they put off "repackaging as type 1" long
enough, they won't need to do it because everyone (ha ha) will have
access to a working luatex even if they don't want to use extex.
i wonder ... do we trust taco to keep to schedule better than we trust
the stix people?
for me, yes. but i've my doubts about taco's schedule, even...
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Will Robertson
> More seriously, my understanding is that stix is planning a (probably
> beta) release of latex fonts by the end of 2007. The present beta
> release is explicitly marked not suitable for LaTeX.
Indeed; I was only referring to the OpenType stuff that allows for
unicode maths in Word 2007 and XeTeX. The (La)TeX support is arguably
more important and I'm sure that's being done by someone who knows
what they're doing.
W
William F Hammond
>>Stixfonts.org never mentions LaTeX, according to google. It does
>>mention TeX, however, on the front page even:
>>
>> http://www.stixfonts.org/
>> Regrettably, this beta test will not include TeX support. We expect
>> the TeX package to be ready for beta test near the end of this year.
(Yes, this is what I meant.)
> well yes. and of course, if they put off "repackaging as type 1" long
> enough, they won't need to do it because everyone (ha ha) will have
> access to a working luatex even if they don't want to use extex.
>
> i wonder ... do we trust taco to keep to schedule better than we trust
> the stix people?
>
> for me, yes. but i've my doubts about taco's schedule, even...
AIUI this should mean that Firefox and the other Mozillae can now be
distributed with all of the fonts needed for Math. In fact, even
though I'm rather clueless about fonts, I _think_, after unpacking the
zipfile in ~/.fonts/opentype, that I've managed to eliminate using the
Symbol font.
This should mean no future fuss about fonts for folk like me with
tired eyes who want to do their proofreading at a comfortable size
in Firefox.
-- Bill
Will Robertson
> AIUI this should mean that Firefox and the other Mozillae can now be
> distributed with all of the fonts needed for Math. In fact, even
> though I'm rather clueless about fonts, I _think_, after unpacking the
> zipfile in ~/.fonts/opentype, that I've managed to eliminate using the
> Symbol font.
It's a bit weird in that math italic letters are in the STIXGeneral-
Italic font and the non-italic math letters are in the STIXGeneral
font, despite their different unicode code ranges (i.e., a single font
could be used for them all). So as long as you're selecting the right
font for the character, these fonts do include every glyph you could
conceivably use for mathematics.
Will
Malte Rosenau
Are the Stix General fonts also meant to be used as text
fonts or are they for typesetting math only? Last time I
checked there were no kerning pairs present. That's very odd.
Paul Vojta
Robin Fairbairns <rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>i wonder ... do we trust taco to keep to schedule better than we trust
>the stix people?
>
>for me, yes. but i've my doubts about taco's schedule, even...
Well, now that the beta fonts are out, if someone wants to roll their own
(La)TeX support, they can.
--Paul Vojta, vo...@math.berkeley.edu
Will Robertson
> In article <fgj476$u...@gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
>
> Robin Fairbairns <r...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> >i wonder ... do we trust taco to keep to schedule better than we trust
> >the stix people?
>
> >for me, yes. but i've my doubts about taco's schedule, even...
>
> Well, now that the beta fonts are out, if someone wants to roll their own
> (La)TeX support, they can.
Eh? The LaTeX support is being done at the moment and is due out in a
couple of months. It wouldn't be very productive to roll your own
support, unless it was to develop some sort of unicode->TeX maths font
re-encoding tool.
Will
Simon Spiegel
<si...@removethis.simifilm.ch> said:
> On 2007-10-30 07:56:49 +0100, "Ulrich M. Schwarz" <broth...@gmx.net> said:
>
>> On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:31:53 +0200, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.stixfonts.org/
>>>
>>> "Beta Fonts Will Be Released on 31 October"
>>>
>>> Need I say more?
>>
>> Doesn't say which year, though. ;)
>
> This year! Unbelievable, they're actually available for download! Who
> would have thoght ...
Just wanted to let you know that STI has published first comments from
beta testers and tried to answer the respective questions ->
http://www.stixfonts.org/betamessages.html . It looks like they try to
improve communication. Definitely a good sign.
simon
Will Robertson
>
> Just wanted to let you know that STI has published first comments from
> improve communication. Definitely a good sign.
Thanks for keeping us updated Simon, I completely missed that. (If
they had an RSS feed or something...)
They haven't addressed the main concern (of mine) that they don't
conform to Microsoft's OpenType math extensions, but I've got a hunch
(well, an educated guess) that this problem will be sorted before too
long. Other than that rather large stumbling block, I'm very happy to
see the project nearing completion! (Or, at least, first release. I'd
expect these fonts will receive several years more of fine-tuning...)
Will
Simon Spiegel
>
> Thanks for keeping us updated Simon, I completely missed that. (If
> they had an RSS feed or something...)
>
> They haven't addressed the main concern (of mine) that they don't
> conform to Microsoft's OpenType math extensions, but I've got a hunch
> (well, an educated guess) that this problem will be sorted before too
> long. Other than that rather large stumbling block, I'm very happy to
> see the project nearing completion! (Or, at least, first release. I'd
> expect these fonts will receive several years more of fine-tuning...)
In case you don't this, the page has been updated again and this might
interest you :) (from http://www.stixfonts.org/feedback-glyphs.html)
> Comment: Well done so far. However, a collection of glyphs is not
> enough. I'm sorry to say. The first oddity of the STIX fonts is that
> the entire Plane 1 set of math alphabets isn't even contained within a
> single font!
> Microsoft has already extended their support of the OpenType standard
> to support Unicode math alphabets (Plane1). They have developed the
> font Cambria Math that encapsulates how math alphabets should be
> represented in OpenType fonts. Sergey Malkin of the Microsoft
> development group first sent me info on this and I'm sure he's got more
> up-to-date documents than I can forward on.
> Early this year I wrote preliminary support for OpenType math fonts for
> LaTeX and the XeTeX typesetting program (at the macro level; Jonathan
> Kew implemented the underlying support for XeTeX itself). And the free
> tool fontforge is able to create such math fonts (to the best of my
> knowledge, although it hasn't been well-tested yet). Sergey also has a
> tool for adding the requisite OpenType information to already-existing
> fonts, as well.
> The gist of Microsoft's work is that all Unicode glyphs are contained
> within a single font along with their variants, and at optical sizes
> for script and superscript sizes as appropriate. OpenType features then
> control the selection of the necessary glyphs. Since the STIX fonts do
> not support this standard, they can't be satisfactorily used in
> Microsoft Word 2007. Nor in XeTeX. I hope the stixfonts project will be
> improving the way their OpenType fonts are constructed for the final
> release. (19 November)
> Response: Some general remarks. We chose OpenType format because it
> supports (entry) numbers in the higher planes. The STIX fonts are
> intended to be widely applicable. There are many apps and OSs/desktop
> environments that DO support OpenType, but not necessarily all of the
> special features that Microsoft has implemented for Word 2007. Please
> keep in mind that according to the OT specs, it is NOT mandatory to use
> those features.
> We had done tests prior to the beta release defining those special
> features that Microsoft used in their Cambria font (e.g. GSUB for large
> sizes), but these tests result in problems for other important
> applications, e.g. Firefox and Internet Explorer on WinXP/Vista.
> Because of results like this, we decided for the beta release to keep
> things simple; the glyphs can be accessed in the font via their Unicode
> number. If you want a special glyph, you use the special font (e.g. the
> font with the variants). This was the only way to get results that
> allowed the maximum number of apps to get good results.
> Next, the goal of STIX is to supply fonts: that is, glyphs for
> scientific characters and symbols in all uses. We are NOT in the
> business of only providing support for (pre) typesetting. The fonts
> contain math tables, automatically generated by Fontforge.
> SergeyMalkin's tool is meant for TT fonts, not for CFF (Type1) fonts,
> such as the STIX Fonts.
> We have received several comments recommending that all Plane 1 glyphs
> should be found in the STIXGeneral font that one would normally expect
> to be reserved for regular weight, upright glyphs. We are considering
> making this change, but we are concerned about how other applications
> will react to this change. We welcome comments about this potential
> change from other application developers.
simon
Will Robertson
> In case you don't this, the page has been updated again and this might
> interest you :)
Hey, that's my comment :) Their stance is odd. I'll have to think it
over some more before replying. (I was too hasty last time.) I don't
understand who their target market is.
Thanks again for the heads up,
Will
Simon Spiegel
> On Dec 4, 4:59 pm, Simon Spiegel <si...@removethis.simifilm.ch> wrote:
>> In case you don't this, the page has been updated again and this might
>> interest you :)
>
> Hey, that's my comment :)
I thought so. There aren't too many people working on math packages for
(Xe)TeX.
> Their stance is odd. I'll have to think it
> over some more before replying. (I was too hasty last time.) I don't
> understand who their target market is.
They probably don't know it themselves. I also think it's strange to
say that a browser is more important for math than a word processor.
I'm really the last person to say that MS Word is the standard we all
should care about, but I think that creating documents with math in a
word processor is definitely more important than reading them in a
browser.
>
> Thanks again for the heads up,
You're welcome, consider me your personal RSS feed in this matter. ;)
simon
William F Hammond
> They probably don't know it themselves. I also think it's strange to
> say that a browser is more important for math than a word
> processor. I'm really the last person to say that MS Word is the
> standard we all should care about, but I think that creating documents
> with math in a word processor is definitely more important than
> reading them in a browser.
Is there a contest in which word processors and browsers are
competing with the ultimate purpose of eliminating one or the
other? Aren't both important?
-- Bill
Will Robertson
>
> Is there a contest in which word processors and browsers are
> competing with the ultimate purpose of eliminating one or the
> other? Aren't both important?
To be honest I've got no idea how advanced the existing MathML
renderers are. But surely if there are typesetting systems that are
actually *good* at typesetting maths then it makes more sense to
provide the fonts for them rather than for the platform that *isn't*
good at typesetting maths (if you were going to choose). Furthermore,
if you were designing a MathML renderer, then under what circumstances
would you not follow the lead of, and use the information inside, the
standard OpenType maths fonts that now exist? (Well, the only one or
two of them so far...)
Will
Will Robertson
> On Dec 6, 8:05 am, William F Hammond <hamm...@csc.albany.edu> wrote:
> > Is there a contest in which word processors and browsers are
> > competing with the ultimate purpose of eliminating one or the
> > other? Aren't both important?
By the way I think we're agreeing with each and both asking rhetorical
questions here :)
Will
William F Hammond
> On Dec 6, 8:05 am, William F Hammond <hamm...@csc.albany.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Is there a contest in which word processors and browsers are
>> competing with the ultimate purpose of eliminating one or the
>> other? Aren't both important?
>
> To be honest I've got no idea how advanced the existing MathML
> renderers are.
The existing renderers are quite good. The slides I presented at
TUG 2007 (available by online video) were XHTML+MathML. Of course,
I could have presented PDF slides, but I like the Firefox rendering of
these slides better than what I have come to expect from PDF slides.
(http://river-valley.tv/conferences/tex/tug2007/)
From my viewpoint the STIX release is useful because it should
become possible now for Firefox to distribute its browser bundled
with the fonts required for math.
> But surely if there are typesetting systems that are
> actually *good* at typesetting maths then it makes more sense to
> provide the fonts for them rather than for the platform that *isn't*
> good at typesetting maths (if you were going to choose).
AMS is one of the members of the STIX group. I think we can trust
them when they tell us that the STIX fonts for TeX are coming.
> Furthermore, if you were designing a MathML renderer, then under
> what circumstances would you not follow the lead of, and use the
> information inside, the standard OpenType maths fonts that now
> exist? (Well, the only one or two of them so far...)
The issues here have been money and intellectual property. Meanwhile
if suppliers of opentype fonts other than STIX wish to make them
freely available (in the sense of free software), I'm sure that gift
would be welcomed.
-- Bill
Will Robertson
> The existing renderers are quite good.
Thanks, I'll check that out.
> From my viewpoint the STIX release is useful because it should
> become possible now for Firefox to distribute its browser bundled
> with the fonts required for math.
Very true. No doubt the other browsers that support MathML will also
come on board, and this is no small accomplishment.
> AMS is one of the members of the STIX group. I think we can trust
> them when they tell us that the STIX fonts for TeX are coming.
Yes, definitely, but the future of maths fonts is OpenType with XeTeX/
LuaTeX and Word 2007. These have better math typesetting engines (in
theory) than TeX itself. (Well, not LuaTeX yet. But it supports OT
fonts, so the maths support is inevitable.)
> The issues here have been money and intellectual property. Meanwhile
> if suppliers of opentype fonts other than STIX wish to make them
> freely available (in the sense of free software), I'm sure that gift
> would be welcomed.
With the current situation, I believe that "someone else" will be
taking the STIX fonts and bundling them up for Word/XeTeX.
Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of time at the moment...
Will