Re: microtype for texinfo

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 01:32:36AM +0200, pertusus@free.fr wrote:
> So, my question is how does Texinfo TeX select scalable fonts for the
> letters that exists in cm fonts, while LaTeX does not?  Is there a way
> to have LaTeX select the same scalable fonts as TeX (even when cm-super
> is not installed)?

I believe the font pixelation was due to the T1 font encoding that was
specified in the LaTeX output.

> The LaTeX I am speaking about has the following in the header:
> \usepackage{amsfonts}
> \usepackage{amsmath}
> \usepackage[gen]{eurosym}
> \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
> \usepackage{textcomp}
> ...
> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
> 
> > BTW, neither microtype nor cm-super are part of core LaTeX, in the sense
> > that they are maintained by other people, and LaTeX can be successfully
> > used without them. Microtype is entirely optional, and cm-super is not
> > always needed, depending on encodings and font formats that are
> > used. --best, karl.
> 
> As I said above, for the LaTeX output converted from Texinfo we use
> quite a few packages to be able to output LaTeX that can express the
> Texinfo formatting.

It's not necessary to obey any of the formatting command for LaTeX
output, mostly the contents of '(texinfo)Global Document Commands'.
If something isn't implemented we shouldn't think of it as a bug or
as a missing feature.  It could be an impossible and never-ending
task to get parity between texinfo.tex output and LaTeX output
(or other output formats like EPUB 3, Docbook or HTML).

We can easily avoid compatibility problems with LaTeX microtype
and fonts by turning it off.  You've gone to the effort of
implementing @microtype in LaTeX so I won't advocate taking the
code out, but in principle, in the future if someone uses @microtype
in their Texinfo document for texinfo.tex output but then this
causes issues with LaTeX, then we could take the code out.