Installing a type-1 font for TeX / LaTeX

Installing a new type-1 font for (La)TeX can be a lot of work, and it easy to make mistakes. Because I experimented a lot with different weights of Multiple Master fonts, I started writing scripts to automate parts of this process. In this document I describe the installation of a normal type-1 font. Later I will add the MM install-process.

Another good description can be found in Mike Shell's Step-By-Step Guide

A rather easy-to-follow introduction is written by Matthew Amster-Burton

I am very grateful to all developers of TeX, LaTeX, and fontinst.

This is all tested on Debian GNU/Linux (Etch, which was upgrade to tetex 3.0. Potato/Woody/Sarge will work with some modifications (/usr/local/lib/texmf)) with fonts from Adobe.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire document is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. This procedure and the software come without warranty of any kind.

I cannot provide any datafile you need. Please do not ask for it.

16-step install guide

1. Choose a font and look up the adobe-names and numbers in adobe.map. Other fontname-files can also be found on the tug-site.
2. Get the .pfb and .afm files from your font supplier. The adobe .afm files should be available on the Adobe ftp-site. You probably better use a mirror, or another mirror.
   If you have the .pfm file but cannot get the .afm file, you can generate one using pfm2afm. Use this utility from your distribution, or download it here.
3. Put all files in one directory together with adobe.map (and .map files from other foundries when needed), and run texname.pl to rename the foundry fontnames to tex-names.
4. If you want to use .pfa files: "for a in *.pfb; do pfb2pfa $a; done"
   This procedure uses .pfa files.
5. Make a file convert.tex with the correct fontname for the fontinst programme, the expert set, oldstyle figures, etc.
6. Run "tex convert.tex" to make fontinst do its job.
7. Run plconvert.sh to complete the process of making all TeX files.
8. Run fontmap.pl to generate the additional psfontsextra.map file, needed by dvips.
9. Edit the psfontsextra.map: check oblique, and see if you need .pfb or .pfa
   If your font comes with oblique fonts, remove the the slanted fonts.
10. Create a stylefile for your font. You can use this times-stylefile as a template.
11. Become root.
12. Edit install.sh to use the correct names, and run it to copy all files to their directories. Be careful, it removes old fontfiles in the target directories.
13. Add psfontsextra.map to your local psfonts.map, usually found in
    /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/
14. Add the style-file to your tex-system, usually in
    /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/styles/
15. Run "texhash".
16. Add "\usepackage{times}" to the preamble of your document (change this to what you made),
    run latex and dvips, and see the result!

Note. There was a problem with condensed fonts and fontinst (up to v1.81): Do not call them condensed ("c"), but narrow ("n")!
For instance, punr8ac (Univers-Condensed) becomes punr8an
Then all works as expected. This renaming is not implemented in the scripts.

Fulko van Westrenen

Last updated: 1 July 2007

Next time: Multiple Master fonts

Feedback is welcome. email: f_vanwestrenen @ umantec . nl

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