[tex-live] Missing fonts in BasicTex for Mac

[George N. White III]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> On the mactex-support list we've had a couple of reports of problems with
> missing fonts (in particular ptmr7t when using the times package or the
> IEEEtrans document class) from folks that have installed BasicTeX which is
> based on the "TeX Live basic scheme" with the addition of "LaTeX recommended
> packages",
> "ConTeXt format", "MetaPost (and Metafont) drawing", "PSTricks packages",
> and the "XeTeX macros."
>
> Can one use tlmgr to install a collection of fonts that would include the
> missing fonts and which collection would have these fonts? Maybe better, is
> there a way to use tlmgr find out which collection has these fonts so I
> don't have to bother this list with things like this?

This gets tricky, as tlmgr will point you to the obsolete "times" package,
which installs a virtual ptmr7t font.   It sounds like you do have the times
package, so you should be able to make .dvi files.  In principle, you
should be able to generate .pdf's that get the base 13 fonts from the
viewer (e.g., without embedding).  For most people, the URW fonts
will be used when a document mentions one of the base 13 fonts.

Do you have ptmr7t.vf and ptmr7t.tfm?  What happens if you
add a \usepackage{times} to sample2e.tex to get, say,
samp-times.tex and run latex+dvips?  I get a samp-times.ps
with:

$ grep '^%%DocumentFonts:' samp-times.ps
%%DocumentFonts: Times-Roman Times-Bold CMSY10 Times-Italic CMMI10 CMR10

Another simple test file using only plain tex to be used if latex fails:

\font\rm=ptmr7t at 10pt
\rm
\input story
\end


To use tlmgr, first, make sure you have a working "tlmgr --help".
This should give you a
typical "unix man page" that will explain the options show below:

$ tlmgr search --global --file ptmr7
tlmgr: installation location
http://ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008
tex4ht:
	texmf-dist/tex4ht/ht-fonts/alias/times/ptmr7t.htf
times:
	texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/adobe/times/ptmr7t.tfm
	texmf-dist/fonts/vf/adobe/times/ptmr7t.vf

$ tlmgr show times
Package:    times
Category:   Package
ShortDesc:  Select Adobe Times Roman (or equivalent) as default font.
LongDesc:   The times package is now obsolete, replaced by the
mathptmx package, which supports Times Roman text and (mostly)
matching mathematics. The times package remains available, for
compatibility; both it and mathptmx are part of psnfss.
Installed:  Yes
Revision:   7340
Collection: collection-fontsrecommended

$ tlmgr show psnfss
Package:    psnfss
Category:   Package
ShortDesc:  Font support for common PostScript fonts.
LongDesc:   Font definition files, macros and font metrics for freely-
available Adobe Type 1 fonts. The font set consists of the
'LaserWriter 35' set (originally 'freely available' because embedded
in PostScript printers), and a variety of other free fonts such as
Bitstream Charter, Adobe Utopia (both donated to the public domain by
their commercial foundries) and Pazo Math (optionally extended with
the fpl small-caps and old- style figures fonts). The bundle is part
of the LaTeX 'required' set of packages.
Installed:  Yes
Revision:   7978
Collection: collection-latex


-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia