[OS X TeX] Snow Leopard font problems

[Herbert Schulz]

On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:00 AM, Stephen Anderson wrote:

> I haven't been following this list closely lately, so something  
> similar may already have been discussed.  If so, I'm sorry for the  
> duplication, and will be grateful for a pointer to information that  
> I should have seen.
>
> Since "upgrading" to Snow Leopard, I find that anything calling for  
> courier fonts (maybe others - this is what I've noticed) shows up in  
> the output as empty space.  That is, invoking the url package and  
> putting \usr{foo at bar.com} in a document results in a long blank  
> space in the pdf at that point.  Likewise \texttt{foo at bar.com}.
>
> I'm using the TexLive 2008 distribution, and everything was fine  
> before moving from Leopard to SnowLeopard.  In fact, in files that  
> were processed in the past, the courier stuff shows up fine in the  
> old pdf, but when I rerun LaTeX/XeTeX on the file, it disappears.
>
> I don't have any idea where this problem resides: something similar  
> happened to me in a Micr$oft Word document when I set some text to  
> "courier std" instead of plain "courier".  But it's in what I do in  
> LaTeX that I really care....
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> -- 
>
> Steve Anderson

Howdy,

Are you using xe(lat)tex? Does the problem exist when the pdf is  
viewed in Adobe Reader?

Several fonts in Snow Leopard have been changed over from dfont format  
to ttc (TrueType Collection) format and the xdvipdfmx back end to xe 
(la)tex that comes with MacTeX(TeX Live)-2008 isn't handling those  
fonts correctly. This is fixed in the upcoming MacTeX(TeX Live)-2009.  
A temporary fix is to tell xe(la)tex to use the xdv2pdf back end: if  
you're using TeXShop see the Xe(La)TeX-xdv2pdf.engine files in ~/ 
Library/TeXShop/Engines/Inactive/XeTeX/ and move them to ~/Library/ 
TeXShop/Engines/; if you are using the command line use

xelatex -output-driver="xdv2pdf" -synctex=1 "yourTeXfile"

which does the job.

Please write again if your aren't using xe(la)tex!

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)