Alto fonts (SYMBOL, HIPPO, SIGMA) on hardcopy devices

[rmkaplan]

We have files and datastructures (strings, image objects, Tedit files) that have characters in idiosyncratic (Alto/Ascii) encodings.

Tedit coerces those character codes into MCCS codes and fonts, so that typing and searching is uniform. But the various output devices have to make sure that their \OUTCHAR functions also do the proper coercions, based on the fact that a DSPFONT was executed to set up the font for the subsequent characters.

The coercion tables and translation functions into MCCS should be (will be) defined systematically. But maybe the generic DSPFONT code should recognize from the font that what it will be asked to output is in the font's character encoding and set it up so that the outchar function does the "right" thing. The right thing may be to select a different font for the output device and set up the translation from the font-encoded input characters to the charencoding of the selected output font. (If the output font is always an MCCS font, then it would be one of the defined translation functions to MCCSl otherwise the device would have to create its own translation for each substitution.)