[OS X TeX] It is possible to use UCS free Unicode fonts with XeTeX (FreeSans, FreeSerif, etc)

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 13 févr. 07 à 03:12, Signups a écrit :

> [...]
>
> The fonts I chose to use are from the UCS free font collection,  
> i.e. FreeSans, FreeSerif and FreeMono.  XeTeX *will* produce PDF  
> files using these fonts, if I use the command "\font 
> \freeserif=FreeSerif at 12pt".   The problem is that mktextfm  
> cannot generate font metrics, and thus every time I generate the  
> PDF file, it takes a good half a minute.  The log results I get are  
> listed below.
> My question:  Has anybody been able to successfully install these  
> fonts with XeTeX on Mac?  Or is there another font (say Gentium)  
> that includes the full Unicode character range that *can* be  
> successfully installed?  I have searched everywhere for decent  
> directions on how to do this, and have come up dry (I'm not willing  
> to move to Context, because I don't want to lose my document classes).

As John McChesney has pointed out, that's more a question for the  
XeTeX mailing list <http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex>, where  
you're more likely to get answers from experts on those things.
>
> [...]
>
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/web2c/mktexnam: Could not map source  
> abbreviation F for FreeSerif.

If you're writing your doctoral thesis, and will hence spend quite  
some time TeXing, I would suggest starting off with a more recent TeX  
install (teTeX has been deprecated for some time now, and I'm not  
even certain of the full compatibility of recent versions of XeTeX  
with it): either gwTeX based on TeX Live installed with i-Installer,  
or TeXLive-2007 installed through the MacTeX package <http:// 
www.tug.org/~koch/NewPackages.html>.

In particular, in these two installations XeTeX is fully integrated  
within the TeX Live and comes with all its support files configured  
and pre-installed. For example, hyperref.sty includes code for  
automatic detection of XeTeX and selection of the hdvipdfm driver,  
and so forth. See also the content of the dedicated tex/xelatex  
directory:

Portable-de-Bruno:~ brunovoisin$ ls -l /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf- 
dist/tex/xelatex
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel  136 Feb 12 18:20 euenc
drwxr-xr-x   5 root  wheel  170 Feb 12 18:20 fontspec
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Feb 12 18:20 graphics
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel  136 Feb 12 18:20 philokalia
drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel  136 Feb 12 18:20 xetexconfig
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Feb 12 18:20 xetexurl
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Feb 12 18:20 xltxtra
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Feb 12 18:20 xunicode

Hope this helps,

Bruno Voisin
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