Using a font that did not come with your TeX distribution requires several steps. But before we go into those details, consider these two alternatives:
This web page is about installing a font that has already been prepared for use with TeX (typically pdftex and/or dvips), not about the work of preparing the support files. That is a much more complicated job; see Philipp Lehman's Font Installation Guide and the Fontinst documentation for starters, if you want to delve into that.
The TUG fonts page has references to fonts commonly used with TeX, and general information on TeX font usage.
If neither of the above alternatives suffice, then the first step is to determine in what directory the new font will live. You can't just choose any directory, it has to be part of the TeX hierarchy. The best choice is your “local texmf” tree, which you can determine as follows:
You can add a new or an existing folder as the root of a new local tree to the list by clicking on Add. The folder must not contain files at its root level or MiKTeX will reject it. Files in the folder must be in subfolders similar to the subfolders in the Install root; for example, TFM files should be in /yourfolder/font/tfm. (More info.)
If you are not using one of the above TeX distributions (MiKTeX, TeX Live, MacTeX), you'll need to consult other documentation.
After determining your local tree for installation (see previous section), the next step is to copy the new files into subdirectories of that tree. Hopefully, your new font came as a zip or other archive file that is already arranged according to the standard TeX Directory Structure (TDS). If this is the case, you can simply unpack it at the top level of your chosen tree.
You can check by inspecting your archive (with unzip -l yourfile.zip, for example). If it has subdirectories such as fonts/ and tex/, it's most likely arranged according to the TDS.
If you're getting “raw” font files without any structure, then you have to move the files yourself into the appropriate subdirectory. Please read the TeX FAQ entry and TDS document (html, pdf).
Warning: some unzip programs take it upon themselves to create their own top-level directory, usually named after the zip file. You must avoid these programs. The plain unzip program, version 5.52 or thereabouts, which is the usual unzip on MacOSX and other Unix-like systems, works fine; you can run unzip --version to check what you've got. The UnZip home page lists working unzip binaries available from CTAN for many systems.
After getting your new files into their proper location (see previous sections), you must update the so-called “filename database”.
After recording the new files (see the previous sections), the next (and most complicated) step is to update various so-called “map” files with the information about your new font.
The commands below depend on your new font coming with a map file. If you have no map file, then it has to be created, and that is not an easy job. See the references at the end.
The commands below use newfont.map for the name of this map file. There are no standard conventions for the name, so it can't be guessed; check your original archive for the name used.
Second, add this one line to updmap.cfg and save it:
Map newfont.map
Third, back at the DOS prompt, run:
initexmf --mkmaps
(Ignore any error messages.)
On MacOSX, this is typically done as system administrator, so:
sudo -H updmap-sys ...
After doing this, you should remake the filename database again, as explained above; this is not always necessary, depending on your setup, but should never hurt.
If all the above seems to have gone ok, to test if the new font is properly recognized, you can use the standard testfont.tex file, like this (prompts also shown):
$ tex testfont # or pdftex testfont ... Name of the font to test = tfmname ... *\table *\bye
It is imperative to enter the exact name of a .tfm file that was installed, not a system font name or a PostScript font name or anything else. The only thing TeX will recognize is the .tfm filename. It's best to leave off the .tfm extension. If you used the default texmf-local directory, on Unix-like systems and MacTeX, you can check for files in subdirectories of /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/fonts/tfm/.
The result of the above run should be a DVI or PDF file, according to whichever tex you invoked, showing the characters in that TFM.
If there are problems, typically dvips or pdftex will try to make bitmaps from the font, perhaps with “missing font” messages. If that frustrating result happens:
Good luck. Corrections to this web page are welcome, please email webmaster@tug.org.