[XeTeX] Newbie Question

[Peter Baker]

Paul Burkander wrote:
> The stumbling block now, as far as I can tell, is that I don't have
> Hoefler fonts, which I gather are on Macs typically.  I considered
> getting them, since they look nice, but they're almost $300!
>   
Wow! Who'd have thought they'd be so expensive? Could you change the 
font to something you have and compile again?
> My question broadly is, how best should fonts be managed, i.e.,
> acquired, and inventoried.  I don't even know what I have on my
> system! Despite having read my latex install documentation.  Is there
> a way to find out?  Is it worth buying a set of fonts - if so which
> set?
>   
Thing is, XeTeX uses your system fonts, not the ones hidden away in your 
TexLive installation directory. So anything you can do to manage or list 
fonts on the system level will do. You can open a terminal and run 
fc-list to get a raw listing of all the fonts on your system. You can 
use the Gnome Character Map utility to get a look at what you've got. 
You can install a number of Open Source fonts via Synaptic or whatever 
you use as a package manager: Liberation, Libertine, DejaVu, Junicode, 
etc. All these will be visible to XeTeX.

Peter