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(kpathsea.info)Fontmap

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Fontmap
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  If a bitmap font or metric file is not found with the original name
(see the previous section), Kpathsea looks through any "fontmap" files
for an "alias" for the original font name.  These files are named
`texfonts.map' and searched for along the `TEXFONTMAPS'
environment/config file variable.  All `texfonts.map' files that are
found are read; earlier definitions override later ones.

  This feature is intended to help in two respects:

  1. An alias name is limited in length only by available memory, not
     by your filesystem.  Therefore, if you want to ask for
     `Times-Roman' instead of `ptmr', you can (you get `ptmr8r').

  2. A few fonts have historically had multiple names: specifically,
     LaTeX's "circle font" has variously been known as `circle10',
     `lcircle10', and `lcirc10'.  Aliases can make all the names
     equivalent, so that it no longer matters what the name of the
     installed file is; TeX documents will find their favorite name.


  The format of fontmap files is straightforward:

   * Comments start with `%' and continue to the end of the line.

   * Blank lines are ignored.

   * Each nonblank line is broken up into a series of "words":   a
     sequence of non-whitespace characters.

   * If the first word is `include', the second word is used as   a
     filename, and it is searched for and read.

   * Otherwise, the first word on each line is the true filename;

   * the second word is the alias;

   * subsequent words are ignored.

  If an alias has an extension, it matches only those files with that
extension; otherwise, it matches anything with the same root, regardless
of extension.  For example, an alias `foo.tfm' matches only when
`foo.tfm' is being searched for; but an alias `foo' matches `foo.vf',
`foo.600pk', etc.

  As an example, here is an excerpt from the `texfonts.map' in the
Web2c distribution.  It makes the circle fonts equivalent and includes
automatically generated maps for most PostScript fonts available from
various font suppliers.

     circle10        lcircle10
     circle10        lcirc10
     lcircle10       circle10
     lcircle10       lcirc10
     lcirc10         circle10
     lcirc10         lcircle10
     ...
     include adobe.map
     include apple.map
     include bitstrea.map
     ...

  Fontmaps are implemented in the file `kpathsea/fontmap.c'.  The
Fontname distribution has much more information on font naming (Note:
Introduction.).