[OS X TeX] Font management with MacTeX 2013

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jun 21, 2013, at 4:20 PM, "Gary L. Gray" <gray at psu.edu> wrote:

> On Jun 20, 2013, at 2:02 AM, Michael Sharpe <msharpe at ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 19, 2013, at 6:15 PM, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Or... just put all the fonts in one location, e.g., .../texmf-local, and still live with one updmap.cfg file. :-)
>> 
>> That works very well as long as you don't use the --enable/--disable options to updmap-sys, perhaps inadvertently, which will create an updmap.cfg in texmf-config. (This happens when you install fonts with scripts like getnonfreefonts-sys, for example.) Then you have two updmap.cfg files, one trumping the other for the remainder of the current TeXLive year. That's not to say that keeping as much as you can in texmf-local doesn't have some serious advantages---it does not need to be reinstalled with every new TeXLive year. To me, having one updmap.cfg that lasts forever even when using --enable/--disable, with the proper initiation each year, is worth a lot.
> 
> Thank you for posting this Michael. Your post made me think about how I deal with font files since I am not a disciple of Herb's "hidden font and files" strategy. Here is my setup...
> 
> I keep everything I install in:
> 
> ~/Library/texmf
> 
> and subdirectories therein, i.e.,
> 
> ~/Library/texmf/bibtex
> ~/Library/texmf/doc
> ~/Library/texmf/dvips
> ~/Library/texmf/fonts
> ~/Library/texmf/source
> ~/Library/texmf/tex
> ~/Library/texmf/tpm
> ~/Library/texmf/web2c
> 
> Each time I install a new version of TeX Live, which is essentially once per year, I run a script I keep around that contains:
> 
> #!/bin/bash
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --syncwithtrees
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --enable Map mtpro2.map
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --enable Map lucida.map
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --enable Map iffonts.map
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --enable Map MinionPro.map
> updmap --nohash --nomkmap --enable Map pmy.map
> updmap
> 
> This gets my fonts working again as I expect.
> 
> In TeX Live Utility, I have "Automaticall enable fonts in my home directory." checked.
> 
> As far as I can tell (which may not be very far), this has worked well for about three years now (maybe a year or so longer than that). My question is, should I be doing something differently? Am I missing something essential with this strategy?
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Gary


Howdy,

If you have only one user account on your system that works fine; although I'd do it in a slightly more ``modern'' way (see below). I have more than one user on my system in case something I play with needs to be isolated for testing and I'd still like all my TeX fonts available from either user.

The more ``modern'' way of doing what you want is to create an updmap.cfg file which contains the lines (for your example case)

Map mtpro2.map
Map lucida.map
Map iffonts.map
Map MinionPro.map
Map pmy.map

with at least one blank line at the end of the file and place that file in ~/Library/texmf/web2c. Then your shell script can simply become

#!/bin/bash
updmap

and you're done. One advantage of this method is that if, for one reason or another, the map file in your HOME folder gets out of sync you simply run

updmap

to get it all working again. Not that what you do doesn't work... for you.

You can also simply open up a window containing /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local using the Go->Go to Folder… command in Finder and then drag the folder proxy icon (to the left of the Folder Name in the Window to the sidebar. Then that hidden folder is always a click away. Not that I do that sort of thing; I have no problem using Terminal and `sudo -H` can be my friend. :-)

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)