current urw-base35-fonts are unusable in texlive

[gitbearflying]

From texlive point of view, new base35-fonts releases can't be used, because the metrics and kerning tables changed, and glyphs were added. Existing documents would be broken, as these would render diffrently. I assume more glyphs is not that problematic, but is there any chance to bring back the metrics/kerning from
original URW fonts Version 1.05? http://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/tlpkg/tlgs/fonts/
If not, it is likely that more metric changes will happen?

[deekej]

Hello @gitbearflying, I'm affraid this will not be possible. Artifex is just a "redistributor" of these fonts, which are needed for the Ghostscript/GhostPDL.

Artifex receives these fonts from the (URW)++ company, who is the author & creator of those fonts. If you need any change like you described happen for the current urw-base35-fonts, then you will need to take this most likely directly to the (URW)++ itself.

However, please note that (URW)++ is normally taking money for those fonts, and upon agreement between them and Artifex they released those 35 fonts under AGPLv3+ license. In the past (URW)++ didn't care much about proper versioning, they were slow to respond, etc. IMHO I wouldn't dare to expect they would bring back any changes.

If you really need the old metrics/kerning, the safest way for now might be to use the old fonts versions.