Re: Greek letters not slanted in -Tps eqn output

[joerg van den hoff]

hi deri,

turns out I actually _have_ had the same problem (sort of, at least): I recently installed 
additional fonts and like robert was not aware that it is necessary to merge the default `download'
file into the new one.

question 1: this is really a bit cumbersome (and prone to cause problems with users not completely 
on top of the situation ;)). would it be complicated (or wrong for some reason) for groff to 
recursively search _all_ `download' instances on the font search path until a hit (or none) is 
found? I really was simply taking that for granted: first look at custom fonts and look for 
everything else in default location.

in any case, after including the default `download' into the new one (so far having only listed my 
newly installed fonts) and, especially, SS, grops indeed now produces correctly the slanted greek 
letters *and*, ultimately more relevant, cures the strange misalignment problems I had noticed.

question 2: while I now understand, that groff, indeed did previously not find 
SS (since it was
specified only in the default place) and that this was simply my fault, I still do _not_ understand 
the following:

1.
the resulting misformatted pdf lists the symbols-slanted font as the one being 
used (although (a)
the font had not been found and (b) definitely had not been used since all 
greek letters appeared
w/o slant). why? if the fallback seemingly is to use S when SS is not found, 
why does the pdf file
still claim it uses SS?

2.
what is the root cause of the misalignment of further equation elements 
following the greek letters
(in my example the 1/2 fraction where the fraction bar is totally mispositioned relative to the 
digits (or those relative to the fraction bar...))? if SS is not found and S used instead? I would
have thought this only could result in non-slanted greek letters but not in 
wrong metric or whatever?

best,

joerg