[NTG-context] OSFONTDIR

[NTG-context] OSFONTDIR

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

Hi everybody,

just a short question: I was under the impression that ConTeXt would not 
look for system fonts unless we set OSFONTDIR explicitly; this appears 
to be the basis of the page Use_the_fonts_you_want on the wiki, and I 
prefer this behavior because it lets me control the fonts I want to use. 
Recently, however (when exactly? I don't know.) this seems to have 
changed, and ConTeXt now searches the system font directories by 
default. I found this out because one of my documents is set up to use 
the STIX2 fonts. In the most recent versions of macos, some files of 
these fonts are included as system fonts under 
/System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental, but not all of them. It took me some 
head scratching to figure out why every run complained about missing 
glyphs until I saw that ConTeXt was using the wrong font. I had to set 
the variable OSFONTDIR to some value to prevent this from happening. So 
my question is: is looking for system fonts by default the new standard? 
Is it a good idea?

Thank you and all best

Thomas
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[NTG-context] Re: OSFONTDIR

[Hans Hagen via ntg-context]

On 7/19/2023 10:27 PM, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> just a short question: I was under the impression that ConTeXt would not 
> look for system fonts unless we set OSFONTDIR explicitly; this appears 
> to be the basis of the page Use_the_fonts_you_want on the wiki, and I 
> prefer this behavior because it lets me control the fonts I want to use. 
> Recently, however (when exactly? I don't know.) this seems to have 
> changed, and ConTeXt now searches the system font directories by 
> default. I found this out because one of my documents is set up to use 
> the STIX2 fonts. In the most recent versions of macos, some files of 
> these fonts are included as system fonts under 
> /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental, but not all of them. It took me some 
> head scratching to figure out why every run complained about missing 
> glyphs until I saw that ConTeXt was using the wrong font. I had to set 
> the variable OSFONTDIR to some value to prevent this from happening. So 
> my question is: is looking for system fonts by default the new standard? 
> Is it a good idea?
> 
> Thank you and all best
it is a tex live thing; you can just set that variable to nothing, in 
the environment or in a local file like in

../tex/texmf-local/web2c/texmfcnf.lua

normally texmf-fonts is where i put fonts and that one should win

Hans


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[NTG-context] Re: OSFONTDIR

[Pablo Rodriguez]

On 7/19/23 22:51, Hans Hagen via ntg-context wrote:
> On 7/19/2023 10:27 PM, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
>> [...] In the most recent versions of macos, some files of
>> these fonts are included as system fonts under
>> /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental, but not all of them. It took me some
>> head scratching to figure out why every run complained about missing
>> glyphs until I saw that ConTeXt was using the wrong font. I had to set
>> the variable OSFONTDIR to some value to prevent this from happening. So
>> my question is: is looking for system fonts by default the new standard?
>> Is it a good idea?
>
> normally texmf-fonts is where i put fonts and that one should win

To solve this issues (since I use my private directory for fonts), I
created a symlink for my main font directory in $HOME/texmf/texmf-fonts/.

Before that, I had the symlink inside the LMTX distribution.

Just in case it might help,

Pablo
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[NTG-context] Re: OSFONTDIR

[Alan Braslau via ntg-context]

On 19/07/23 19/07/23, 22:51, Hans Hagen via ntg-context wrote:
>> is looking for system fonts by default the new standard? Is it a good 
>> idea?
>>
>> Thank you and all best
> it is a tex live thing; you can just set that variable to nothing, in 
> the environment or in a local file like in
> 
> ../tex/texmf-local/web2c/texmfcnf.lua
> 
> normally texmf-fonts is where i put fonts and that one should win

A TeX-live thing can be the default for TeX live.

I agree with Thomas, not explicitly including the system fonts by 
default is preferable. Maybe the standalone installation still does this 
- I hope so - but have not checked. If it defauts to including the 
system fonts, I would suggest that this is not necessarily a good idea.

Alan
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[NTG-context] Re: OSFONTDIR

[Alan Braslau via ntg-context]

Thomas,

I actually set OSFONTDIR=.
which seems to be a sane default. I store specific font files with 
projects (along with a copy of the ConTeXt distribution used to typeset 
the project). This way, I can come back to a project later and make 
minor corrections without running into surprises or the need to update 
my sources.

Alan



On 21/07/23 21/07/23, 16:43, Alan Braslau wrote:
> On 19/07/23 19/07/23, 22:51, Hans Hagen via ntg-context wrote:
>>> is looking for system fonts by default the new standard? Is it a good 
>>> idea?
>>>
>>> Thank you and all best
>> it is a tex live thing; you can just set that variable to nothing, in 
>> the environment or in a local file like in
>>
>> ../tex/texmf-local/web2c/texmfcnf.lua
>>
>> normally texmf-fonts is where i put fonts and that one should win
> 
> A TeX-live thing can be the default for TeX live.
> 
> I agree with Thomas, not explicitly including the system fonts by 
> default is preferable. Maybe the standalone installation still does this 
> - I hope so - but have not checked. If it defauts to including the 
> system fonts, I would suggest that this is not necessarily a good idea.
> 
> Alan
> 

-- 
Alan Braslau
816 West Mountain Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80521 USA
mobile: (970) 237-0957

Conserve energy! ;-)

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