[XeTeX] [texlive] opentype fonts from $TEXMFLOCAL

[John Was]

Hello

If it's of any use, under Windows I put the actual font files wherever I 
want them to be (in my case d:\fontbkup\otffonts), and then use Windows' own 
utility for installing the font (settings > control panel > fonts > File > 
Install new fonts).  At that point I need to scroll down to the directory 
where I have put the font files, highlight those that I want to install, and 
then with a click the job is done (the fonts are then available to all 
programs, such as MS Word or any other program that might want to use a 
font).

When I next load XeTeX, it's clear from a bit of disk activity that it 
recognizes the addition of new fonts, and thereafter the fonts are available 
to XeTeX, as are all fonts that are available to Windows programs generally. 
You can force it to manually to rebuild its database of fonts with the 
fc-cache command, but I haven't found that to be necessary.

The only trouble I've ever had is with old fonts that have potential name 
conflicts with others, but if I confine myself as far as possible to proper 
OTF fonts the system seems pretty robust.  (I did briefly lose an accented 
character in a Greek font a few months ago, for no obvious reason - but then 
I had been tinkering with Fontmonger!)

John





 ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Diederick C. Niehorster" <dcnieho at gmail.com>
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 8:37 AM
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] [texlive] opentype fonts from $TEXMFLOCAL


> Hi Wilfred,
>
> Thank you for your reply. Ah, I'm definately not putting the fonts in
> a system font directory (thats c:\windows\fonts), that would explain
> why fc-cache cant find them. I tried the otfinfo command to find the
> identification string, it was "Arno Pro". It should be noted all
> worked well on miktex before when I simply dropped the font in
> texmf/fonts/opentype. I was planning to do things correctly now and
> not drop anything manually into my texlive/2009/fonts, but keep it in
> the $TEXMFLOCAL tree, where I believe things I add myself should be.
>
> I expected kpathsea (thats just the utility that does file finding
> right?) would search the local tex trees for fonts as well, but maybe
> i have to tell it or fc-cache to do so. I heard about font.conf, but
> there is none of those in my $TEXMFLOCAL tree...
>
> Best,
> Dee
>
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Wilfred van Rooijen
> <wvanrooijen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hello Diederick,
>>
>> The 'fc-cache' command will only cache the fonts in the 'system font 
>> directories'. I don't know where and exactly those directories are 
>> defined, but it may well be that the $TEXMFLOCAL is not one of those 
>> system directories. Then, fc-cache simply does not cache the fonts there 
>> and then they also don't show up using 'fc-list'.
>>
>> On linux a simple trick is to start OpenOffice and see if the requested 
>> font shows up in the list. I don't know if the same trick works on 
>> Windows, though.
>>
>> Furthermore, the fonts can have various "identification strings". Xetex 
>> uses a specific one of these. From the error, it may be that you are 
>> requesting a font but using the wrong identifier.
>>
>> Wilfred
>>
>> --- On Thu, 25/3/10, Diederick C. Niehorster <dcnieho at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> From: Diederick C. Niehorster <dcnieho at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: [XeTeX] [texlive] opentype fonts from $TEXMFLOCAL
>>> To: "Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
>>> Date: Thursday, 25 March, 2010, 2:59 PM
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> Just yesterday I moved from miktex to texlive 2009 (fresh
>>> install,
>>> fully updated). I'm having trouble with XeTeX not detecting
>>> the
>>> opentype fonts i put in $TEXMFLOCAL
>>> (C:\texlive\texmf-local\fonts\opentype and underlying
>>> folders). I ran
>>> fc-cache on that folder with the --verbose switch. The
>>> first time i
>>> run it, it tells me it is caching the fonts in all the
>>> subdirectories,
>>> the second time it tells me it is skipping them as they are
>>> already in
>>> the cache, so that seems to have worked correctly. However,
>>> when I run
>>> "fc-list > fc.log" and search in that text file (no grep
>>> on windows
>>> for as far as i know) I find no references to the fonts
>>> that were just
>>> cached. XeLaTeX aborts with the following error:
>>> ----
>>> kpathsea: Invalid fontname `Arno Pro', contains ' '
>>>
>>> ! Font \zf at basefont="Arno Pro" at 10.0pt not loadable:
>>> Metric (TFM) file or ins
>>> talled font not found.
>>> \zf at fontspec ...ntname \zf at suffix " at \f at size pt
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> \unless \ifzf at icu \zf at set@...
>>> l.103 \setromanfont[Ligatures=Common]{Arno Pro}
>>> ----
>>> This must be some basic mistake, but after 2 hours of
>>> googling, I have
>>> decided to ask it on the list here. I'd like to keep my
>>> fonts in
>>> $TEXMFLOCAL so they stay with updates (hope I understood
>>> that
>>> correctly) and I'll only want to use them from XeTeX.
>>>
>>> What's the trick?
>>>
>>> Best and thanks,
>>> Dee
>>>
>>>
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