Beginnner's question: fumbling with font finding failures.

[Paul R Martin <paulm1305@optusnet.com.au>]

Dear ConTeXters,

I'm a newcomer to ConTeXt and to this congenial and obviously active  
list:  please bear with me and read my story. I'll be much more  
succinct in future.

Last week, I installed TeTex and ConTeXt [Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther"]. I'm  
working my way through the "Excursion" and "This Way/ My Way"  
documents. They are great documents, ConTeXt is a great  package, and  
I've had some timely tips from Hans Hagen (Hail thee, Hans!). I've made  
some good progress. I have learned the difference between a  _Hasselter  
juffer_ and a _Hasselter bitter_, but I'm still not sure what one does  
with a _foekepot_. I suspect that it's a percussion instrument, but  
that's beside the point.

I have a history of user-level LaTeX formatting in my distant past.  
I've mostly been stuck in the dark, ragged, dreary, world of MS Office  
for the past decade, so you can understand my joy to see beautiful,  
colourful .pdf pages rolling up my screen, as a result of typing  
straightforward, comprehensible formatting commands in a plain text  
ascii file. As my fellow Australians would say: ** You little ripper!  
**

Now, I've managed to side-step some menacing signs of absent fonts as I  
progressed. My goals are straightforward (technical documentation and  
scientific writing), so I've been happy to accept the font  
fallback/replacement routines. Further, my glimpses into the pages and  
pages of information about font handling make me think that it's a kind  
of bad neighbourhood for a person like me to enter, just as it was when  
TeX and I were young.

But now I've struck the following blockade in my quest to produce a 'My  
Way' document, which I did by simply

	1) cutting and pasting the source code from the page 3 of My Way #0  
[mag-0000.pdf]
	2) changing the author name, and
	3) saving the resultant text as [mwy-000-Test.tex],  then
	4) running the perl "texexec" script on it.

OK, don't snicker, it may not be such a silly thing to try. I'm sure  
there are other people who might try this kind of approach. Here is the  
gist of the result -- ellipses mark my deletions.

------------------------------START---------------------------

[nvri-hayden:~/Documents/ConTEXt/MyWay] paulm% texexec --color --pdf  
mwy-000-Test

  TeXExec 5.2.4 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 1997-2005

...

system          : macros of module mag-01 loaded

...

(/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/context/base/type- 
akb.tex)kpathsea: Running mktextfm uplr8t
mktextfm: Running mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1;  
nonstopmode; input uplr8t
This is METAFONT, Version 2.71828 (Web2C 7.5.3)

kpathsea: Running mktexmf uplr8t
! I can't find file `uplr8t'.
<*> ...:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input uplr8t

Please type another input file name
! Emergency stop.
<*> ...:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode; input uplr8t

Transcript written on mfput.log.
grep: uplr8t.log: No such file or directory
mktextfm: `mf-nowin -progname=mf \mode:=ljfour; mag:=1; nonstopmode;  
input uplr8t' failed to make uplr8t.tfm.
kpathsea: Appending font creation commands to missfont.log.

...

! Font \*palatino12ptrmtf*:=uplr8t at 12.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM)  
file no
t found.

...

---------------------------------------------FINISH-------------------

[etc etc, I think that 'nonstopmode' might have been why this loop  
continued for the next 120 seconds. BTW I typed 'Q' in response to the  
input file name request  above].

Now, it's obvious from the ContextGarden that I've probably missed some  
step in font configuration. But when I start to look in the numerous  
sources of advice, I strike the usual frustration. There are lots of  
statements (lots and lots of 'em!) about checking and un-commenting and  
configuring, but I can find no list of *prioritised* things for  
beginners to try, in the order which they should be tried, in order to  
solve what looks to be a simple and typical problem. Without such a set  
of instructions, I'm loath to change anything in my configuration, for  
fear that the cure might be worse than the disease.

I'd love to try to understand the source of the error, and how to  
handle fonts professionally, and lots of other things as well. But I'm  
a busy scientist with many other commitments. As long as ConText is  
working I'm happy, but  I can't devote much time to delving into  
errors. So I may not be a typical participant in this list. But if you  
help me,  you will help to make ConTeXt more accessible to others like  
me, and this will be good for the cause, _nes pas?_  I'd be happy to  
write a my way document or contribute a Wiki page on this topic to  
encapsulate any good advice for myself and other neophytes.

Yours,

P.

Paul R Martin
National Vision Research Institute of Australia
Tel: +613 9349 7481
prmartin@unimelb.edu.au