I am trying to document for the end user where additional fonts should
go (ones the user buys or downloads). I would be grateful for comments
and corrections to what I have gathered so far.

===============================8<=======================================

On most computer systems there are four places where TeX fonts can live:

1. in the operating system's own fonts folder
2. in TeX Live's texmf-dist/fonts/ folder ($TEXMFMAIN)
3. in TeX Live's shared texmf/fonts folder ($TEXMFLOCAL)
4. in the user's personal TeX folder texmf/fonts subdirectory

Within these fonts directories the following subdirectories are normally
used:

METAFONT (.mf) fonts public
Type 1 (.pfb) fonts type1
TrueType (.ttf) fonts truetype
OpenType (.otf) fonts opentype

Within those subdirectories, a font normally goes in a subsubdirectory
called after the name of the person or company making or selling the
font (often referred to as the "foundry"), eg ibm or monotype etc

On Windows and Mac OS systems, the system fonts folder gets indexed and
cached automatically (as fas as I am aware), so putting fonts in there
means they can be used immediately, but jumbling everything in together
may end up being unmaintainable. I believe fonts in the Linux systems
fonts folder have to be indexed/cached with fc-cache as below.

On Linux systems (including Mac OS), putting them anywhere else means
they need to be indexed/cached by running the fc-cache program or its
Mac OS equivalent (name?) which uses (eg) the 09-texlive.conf file in
/etc/fonts (and others) to specify which directories contain fonts
needing indexing and caching.

On Windows systems, I do not know the effect of putting new fonts
anywhere else except the system fonts folder.

===============================8<=======================================

Peter

I think that this might be of little help, but...

I'm on a Linux system and I have installed all sorts of fonts into
`/usr/share/fonts` in subdirectories `cmap, Cmap, opentype, truetype,
type`, X11`.

I have completely forgotten how I used any of these in a LaTeX document
although I did manage to use some of them. If only you had asked 10
years ago!

Best
Peter W.

On 22/02/2022 17:17, Peter Flynn wrote:
> I am trying to document for the end user where additional fonts should
> go (ones the user buys or downloads). I would be grateful for comments
> and corrections to what I have gathered so far.
>
> ===============================8<=======================================
>
> On most computer systems there are four places where TeX fonts can live:
>
> 1. in the operating system's own fonts folder
> 2. in TeX Live's texmf-dist/fonts/ folder ($TEXMFMAIN)
> 3. in TeX Live's shared texmf/fonts folder ($TEXMFLOCAL)
> 4. in the user's personal TeX folder texmf/fonts subdirectory
>
> Within these fonts directories the following subdirectories are normally
> used:
>
> METAFONT (.mf) fonts public
> Type 1 (.pfb) fonts type1
> TrueType (.ttf) fonts truetype
> OpenType (.otf) fonts opentype
>
> Within those subdirectories, a font normally goes in a subsubdirectory
> called after the name of the person or company making or selling the
> font (often referred to as the "foundry"), eg ibm or monotype etc
>
> On Windows and Mac OS systems, the system fonts folder gets indexed and
> cached automatically (as fas as I am aware), so putting fonts in there
> means they can be used immediately, but jumbling everything in together
> may end up being unmaintainable. I believe fonts in the Linux systems
> fonts folder have to be indexed/cached with fc-cache as below.
>
> On Linux systems (including Mac OS), putting them anywhere else means
> they need to be indexed/cached by running the fc-cache program or its
> Mac OS equivalent (name?) which uses (eg) the 09-texlive.conf file in
> /etc/fonts (and others) to specify which directories contain fonts
> needing indexing and caching.
>
> On Windows systems, I do not know the effect of putting new fonts
> anywhere else except the system fonts folder.
>
> ===============================8<=======================================
>
> Peter

On 22/02/2022 21:06, Peter Wilson wrote:
> I think that this might be of little help, but...

Every little helps.

> I'm on a Linux system and I have installed all sorts of fonts into
> `/usr/share/fonts` in subdirectories `cmap, Cmap, opentype, truetype,
> type`, X11`.
grep -nH /usr/share/fonts /etc/fonts/conf.avail/*
08-system.conf:4: <dir>/usr/share/fonts/opentype</dir>
08-system.conf:5: <dir>/usr/share/fonts/truetype</dir>
08-system.conf:6:<!-- <dir>/usr/share/fonts/type1</dir>-->

So if you run fc-cache, it will index and cache all the fonts in your
opentype, truetype, and type1 subdirectories. Your 08-system.conf or
equivalent would need to have an entry for cmap, Cmap, and X11 for any
of those fonts to be found, if I have understood the mechanism properly.

> I have completely forgotten how I used any of these in a LaTeX
> document although I did manage to use some of them. If only you had
> asked 10 years ago!

fc-list will then list all indexed fonts and show the fontname field,
which is what you can use in (eg) fontspec's \setmainfont command.

Peter

Am Tue, 22 Feb 2022 17:17:25 +0000 schrieb Peter Flynn:

> I am trying to document for the end user where additional fonts should
> go (ones the user buys or downloads). I would be grateful for comments
> and corrections to what I have gathered so far.
>
> ===============================8<=======================================
>
> On most computer systems there are four places where TeX fonts can live:
>
> 1. in the operating system's own fonts folder
> 2. in TeX Live's texmf-dist/fonts/ folder ($TEXMFMAIN)
> 3. in TeX Live's shared texmf/fonts folder ($TEXMFLOCAL)
> 4. in the user's personal TeX folder texmf/fonts subdirectory

I would install fonts that can be used also by applications (so
truetype and opentype) in the standard font installation of the
system.

Fonts that are only meant for tex (metafont and nowadays type1
fonts) can go into texmflocal, or texmfhome or in some dedicated
texmf that is added with texmf conf auxtrees. I would never put
something manually into texmf-dist.

--
Ulrike Fischer
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/

On 23/02/2022 08:48, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
> Am Tue, 22 Feb 2022 17:17:25 +0000 schrieb Peter Flynn:
>
>> I am trying to document for the end user where additional fonts should
>> go (ones the user buys or downloads). I would be grateful for comments
>> and corrections to what I have gathered so far.
>>
>> ===============================8<=======================================
>>
>> On most computer systems there are four places where TeX fonts can live:
>>
>> 1. in the operating system's own fonts folder
>> 2. in TeX Live's texmf-dist/fonts/ folder ($TEXMFMAIN)
>> 3. in TeX Live's shared texmf/fonts folder ($TEXMFLOCAL)
>> 4. in the user's personal TeX folder texmf/fonts subdirectory
>
>
> I would install fonts that can be used also by applications (so
> truetype and opentype) in the standard font installation of the
> system.

Good point, thanks.

> Fonts that are only meant for tex (metafont and nowadays type1
> fonts) can go into texmflocal, or texmfhome or in some dedicated
> texmf that is added with texmf conf auxtrees.

On non-shared systems it's not really important which...until you need
to back up, or upgrade

> I would never put something manually into texmf-dist.

Unfortunately this is not well-publicised enough.

Peter

Am Wed, 23 Feb 2022 14:14:32 +0000 schrieb Peter Flynn:

>> I would never put something manually into texmf-dist.
>
> Unfortunately this is not well-publicised enough.

In a computer the places where you can and should put files manually
are much rarer than the places that you should better leave alone.
So you should always look for positive advice:

TEXMFLOCAL
The tree which administrators *can use* ...

TEXMFHOME
The tree which users *can use*

--
Ulrike Fischer
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/