[XeTeX] Guaranteed Unicode replacement glyph in every TeX installation?

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sat, 21 Aug 2021 09:25:14 -0600 (MDT) schrieb Doug McKenna:

> Thanks all for your interesting responses. 
> 
> Unfortunately, my possibly poorly worded question remains unanswered. Let me try again. 
> 
> Consider the short example just used: 
> 
> \documentclass{article} 
> \usepackage{fontspec} 
> \setmainfont{DejaVu Serif} 
> 
> \begin{document} 
> ^^^^fffd 
> \end{document} 
> 
> When I run it, fontspec complains that it can't find the font. So obviously "DejaVu Serif" is not installed, either on my system or anywhere in the bowels of all the ~150,000 TeXLive (2019) files that have been installed in the TDS on my machine. 

No, it only says that it is not found by fontname. Something that
happens often on linux. Try with \setmainfont{DejaVuSerif.ttf}


> So, is there a font name I can use in the \setmainfont{} command
> that is ALWAYS available (upon TeX installation) when processing
> this LaTeX file with XeTeX? Or always available after a certain
> version of a TeX installation? 

I have no idea when DejaVu was added but it is in texlive 2019.
If you want to support also older systems try e.g. on overleaf.



-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/