[OS X TeX] Newbie install and font question

[Peter Erwin]

Hi Philip,

It looks like William and Oscar have already given you most of what you
need to know... I thought I'd throw in a few more details of what fonts
go where that I've been able to figure out in the last few weeks
(since you are a "fontaholic" -- like me, I guess!).

When teTeX is installed, part of the installation is a set of PostScript fonts
in what I'll call "unix" format: the .pfb files (along with 
font-metric files, virtual-
font files, and other strange things which TeX and its variants use). 
Since they
aren't standard Macintosh font files, and they don't live in any of 
the standard
OS X font folders (e.g., /System/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts,
~/Library/Fonts, etc.), MacOS X doesn't really know about them.  Hence,
"normal" programs like Word et al. won't know about them, either.

But the various TeX-related programs *do*, so they can create PostScript or
PDF files with the fonts.  TeXShop displays PDF files (and does other things,
of course!).  Since the PostScript/PDF files created by the TeX-type programs
either have the fonts automatically included or are using "standard" fonts
(such as Times), there is no problem displaying or printing them.  (You can
view the PDF files with just about anything that displays PDF, such as Preview
or Acrobat Reader, in addition to TeXShop itself.)

So what do you get in the way of "unix"-style fonts?  You can find out by
poking around in some of the TeX hierarchy,'s directories, in particular:
    /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/type1/
The standard TeX font (what all your documents will use unless you specify
otherwise!) is Donald Knuth's Computer Modern (the PostScript versions
are in ...type1/bluesky/cm).  Also available are Times, Palatino, Courier,
Helvetica, New Century Schoolbook, Avant Garde, Bookman, Zapf Chancery,
Symbol, Zapf Dingbats, Bitstream Charter, and Utopis.  *And* various other
fonts created more-or-less specifically for use with TeX, such as Euler, Omega,
and Math Pazo.

(GS installs some of its *own* unix-style fonts, in
    /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
but I don't know if they are of much direct use in TeX documents.)

Probably more than you wanted to know...

cheers,

Peter


>Being a long time Mac user and using OSX for over a year now, I have found
>numerous problems relating to fonts and the multitude of locations that they
>can be saved.  (I am a bit of a fontaholic and so use and abuse fonts in my
>documents!)
>
>Where does GS/teTeX install those fonts?  Do these installed fonts end up in
>the font menus of other OSX software?  i.e. MS Word
>
>If I remember from an old GS install on OS9 the fonts had a similar look to
>many popular postscript fonts but had different names.  If this is the case,
>then I don't think I will have a problem.  If they do have similar names,
>then I will need to do some cleaning after the install.
>
>I am on digest mode, so if you send me a reply with clarification questions
>please cc to my email account or be patient as I wait for the digest.

-- 
=============================================================
Peter Erwin                   Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
erwin at ll.iac.es               C/ Via Lactea s/n
tel. +34 922 605 244          38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

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