[OS X TeX] Re: Font cache problems with XeLaTeX under Snow Leopard

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 26, 2009, at 2:06 PM, J. McKenzie Alexander wrote:

> The basic problem remains if I move \setmainfont{...} to the  
> preamble (and delete all the other instances of it in the document):  
> setting the main font to Baskerville or Hoefler Text doesn't  
> generate italic text from \emph{...} or boldface text from \textbf 
> {...}. But I can get italic and boldface text if I set the main font  
> to something else (like Book Antiqua), which was what I was trying  
> to demonstrate.
>
> J.

Howdy,

What you are seeing there is a problem with xdvipdfmx and ttc fonts.  
Several fonts (e.g., Baskerville, Hoefler Text and Helvetica) have  
changed from .dfont format to .ttc format in the transition from  
Leopard to Snow Leopard and the original xdvipdfmx isn't handling that  
correctly. This problem is fixed in the xdvipdfmx that will ship with  
MacTeX-2009.

As a temporary fix you can switch to using xdv2pdf as the backend.  
With TeXShop go to ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines/Inactive/XeTeX/ (~ is  
your HOME directory) and move the engine files found there two  
directories up, to ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines/. When you restart  
TeXShop the should show up on the drop down engine list on the source  
file's toolbar. Put the line

% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX-xdv2pdf

at the top of the file and TeXShop will use that engine file to  
compile the file. Alternatively use the command line

xelatex -output-driver="xdv2pdf" myfile

to have xelatex compile myfile.tex into myfile.pdf using the xdv2pdf  
backend.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)