What is the New Font Selection Scheme (NFSS)?
NFSS is an extension to LaTeX written by Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schpf. It is described in TUGboat, volume 10 (1989), No. 2. In traditional typesetting, fonts are described by four parameters: the family (e.g., computer modern), the series (i.e., the weight and width of the font, like light or bold), the shape (e.g., italic), and the size. NFSS is a mechanism allowing the user to change any of these independently. NFSS makes it relatively easy to use nonstandard fonts such as the PostScript ones with LaTeX, and easy to change math fonts. It also allows dynamic loading of fonts at runtime (not when the format file is created). NFSS will be part of version 3.0 of LaTeX. Currently, you need to create a new format file to use it. It is available via anonymous ftp from all the major archives mentioned in question 22. Its home is on ftp.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.8.13) in ./tex-archive/macros/latex/distribs/nfss2. NFSS can be used in plain TeX as well, through an interface written by Wayne
