larry quotes david: > that [VF > MLTeX] presumably was Knuth's opinion at the > time, mltex predates vf, doesn't it? and responds: There are no grounds to presume. Knuth went to great pains to assert Fuchs' priority (over Adobe Inc, J. Warnock?) in the introduction of the VF concept. the initial need for vf was to overcome restrictions of certain typesetting machines, in particular the alphatype crs, which couldn't cope with glyphs larger than a certain size (so, for example, the summation had to be set from two pieces) or which were particularly deep (as are the radical signs in tex's extension font). the first issue of tugboat containing material set on the alphatype appeared in 1981. vf wasn't adopted into general use until much later -- 1990 was when the "virtual fonts, more fun for grand wizards" article appeared in tugboat. so, in the sense that david intended (i believe), mltex does predate vf, since michael ferguson's first tugboat article on the subject appeared in 1985. -- bb