Variants include typeface variations (e.g., italic, sans serif), and font encodings (e.g., Adobe standard, TeX text).
A fontname may require multiple variants. To resolve the worst ambiguities, we specify that any encoding variant (‘7’, ‘8’, or ‘9’, see below) come last and any other numeral variant come first (to avoid confusion with a design size). We recommend but do not require that the other variants be given in alphabetical order. (It's not required because it's too painful to implement the sorting in TeX, and many existing names already have non-alphabetized variants.)
The letterspacing possibilities introduced by fontinst and
virtual fonts have not yet become sufficiently widespread to make
standardization beneficial. Likewise for the many possible ways to
generate small caps fonts.
Notes on specific variants, both old and new:
For a font to be named with a certain encoding variant, it's not
necessary that all the characters appear in precisely the same positions
as in the encoding definition. It's enough that the usual TeX macros
work. In practice, this means that it's ok for a font to be labelled
‘7t’ if the only difference from Computer Modern is that the
ligatures and the ‘lslash’ and ‘Lslash’ characters are
different, since it's impossible to access or change the ligature table
from TeX. Standard PostScript fonts don't have an ‘lslash’
character the way Computer Modern does, but they do have the
‘Lslash’ and ‘lslash’ characters themselves, so the usual
TeX \lslash and \Lslash macros can be made to work via
ligatures. See the file T1.etx file in the fontinst
distribution for details.
If a name does not contain a specific encoding variant, its encoding is
unspecified. For example, some of the fonts distributed with Dvips(k)
have names like ‘ptmr’ for ‘Times-Roman’; they use the Dvips
encoding (see dvips), which is close to (but not the same
as) the TeX text encoding (as in Computer Modern Roman). Similarly,
the TFM files distributed with Dvilj(k) for the builtin LaserJet 4 fonts
have names like ‘cunm’, since these fonts, while compatible with
TeX text, contain many additional characters.
Fontname 1 assignments are shown in brackets in the following table, from the file variant.map. It is organized alphabetically by abbreviation. Each line consists of an abbreviation and either any parts of a PostScript ‘FontName’ which use that abbreviation or the PostScript ‘Encoding’ name.
0 inferior
1 superior
2 proportional digits, not tabular
obsolete [3=>7f] Fraction
obsolete [4 fax; now typeface ‘lx’, Lucida Fax]
5 escape for (presently) phonetic encodings
6 escape for (mostly) Cyrillic encodings [was ‘SemiSerif’]
7 escape for (mostly) 7-bit encodings
8 escape for (mostly) 8-bit encodings
9 escape for (presently) expert encodings [was oldstyle digits]
a Alt Arrows Alternative [was alternate encoding]
obsolete [b bright; now typeface lh, Lucida Bright]
c SmallCaps
d Display Titling Caption Headline TallCaps SwashCaps LombardicCaps Festive
e Engraved Copperplate Elite
f Fraktur Gothic OldEnglish Handtooled (`gothic' can also be sans)
g SmallText lc only, or designed for small sizes [was grooved, as in the IBM logo]
h Shadow
i Italic Kursiv Ital text italic
j old-style digits [was invisible]
k Greek obsolete
l Outline OpenFace Blanks
m math italic
n Informal Fashion Schlbk for Stone
o Oblique Obl slanted
p Ornaments
obsolete [q=>8t Cork (TeX extended) encoding]
r roman or sans; often omitted, see text
s Gothic sans serif
t Monospace fixed-width typewriter
u underline or unslanted italic
v MathExtension
w Script Handwritten Swash Calligraphy Cursive Tango Ligature
x built with Adobe expert encoding [was expert-encoded]
y MathSymbol
z Cyrillic font-dependent Cyrillic
5a PhoneticAlternate
5i PhoneticIPA
5s sil-IPA
5t TeX-IPA Fukui Rei, LaTeX T3
5w TeXAfricanLatin wsuipa fonts, LaTeX OT3
5z user
6a T2A
6b Cyrillic part of ISO 8859-5, seven bits
6c T2C
6d Cyrillic CP866 encoding
6g LGR Greek font encoding
6i ISO 8859-5
6k Cyrillic KOI8-R encoding
6m Cyrillic Macintosh encoding
6s Storm extra encoding
6t T2B
6w Cyrillic CP1251 encoding
6x X2
6y LCY
6z user
7a A alternate characters only
7c Dfr Fraktur
7d OsF OSF oldstyle digit encoding
7f Fraction
7k OT2Cyrillic
7m TeXMathItalicEncoding see texmital
7t TeX text encoding (as in Computer Modern Roman)
7v TeXMathExtensionEncoding see texmext
7y TeXMathSymbolEncoding see texmsym
7z user
82 GreekKeys
83 Ibycus1
84 Ibycus2
8a StandardEncoding Adobe standard encoding, see 8a
8c TeXTextCompanion LaTeX TS1
8e CE Adobe CE
8f TeXAfricanLatin LaTeX T4
8g groff
8i TS0 Intersection of TS1/Adobe Standard
8m Macintosh standard encoding
8n LM1 Textures
8q encqxoosix QX, from GUST
8r TeXBase1Encoding (see 8r)
8t ECEncoding CorkEncoding (see ec), aka tex256.enc
8u XT2Encoding cmtt + Latin 2, see xl2.enc
8v TeXVietnamese T5
8w Windows 3.1 ANSI encoding
8x Expert expert encoding
8y LY1 texnansi
8z XL2Encoding cmr + Latin 2, see xl2.enc
9c expert + Text companion
9d expert + oldstyle digits + Cork
9e expert + Cork
9i TS0X Intersection of TS1/Standard/Expert
9o expert + oldstyle digits + TeX text
9s SF SuperFont
9t expert + TeX text
9u Unicode-compatible
9x TeXnANSIEncodingX texnansx, texnansi without repeats
9z user
- songti for mnm