Re: New user's first successes and problems

[<mari.voipio@iki.fi>]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Robert Lopez wrote:
> >
> > > ! Font \*12ptrmtf*=utmr8t at 12.0pt not loadable: \
> > > Metric (TFM) file not found.
> >
> > Did you look after utmr8t.tfm? (URW "Times Roman")
>
> I do not understand. I have no file on my system with utmr8t in the name.
> I checked that. I do have these files:
>
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/afm/urw/times/utmr8a.afm
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/afm/urw/times/utmri8a.afm
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/type1/urw/times/utmr8a.pfb
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/type1/urw/times/utmri8a.pfb

In that case: did you run the script texfont? If not

texfont --encoding=ec --batch type-tmf.dat

will help a lot. If you are using another encoding, replace
"--encoding=ec" with "--encoding=texnansi" or "--encoding=8r" to get
usable results.

Depending on what kind of system you are using, it may run
	mktexlsr
after each font file (my TeXLive in Windows does - MikTeX didn't). If it
doesn't, make sure you do it. Or use some other way (i.e. a menu command
or similar, depends on the system) to update your file name database. The
main point is that the new metric files (*.tfm) will not work until you
update the file name database.

Texfont will generate the metric files (*.tfm) out of the *.afm files).
The command is easiest to look up on page 37 of the "Fonts in ConTeXt"
manual. The command syntax is explained on the page 32 of the same manual.
There's also a separate manual "TeXfont explained", which may help as
well.

I found that by looking up all the *.tfm files I could easily get a list
of fonts available to me in the system I'm using - basically I seem to
need to rely on the urw fonts, which suits me fine.

BTW. The type-map.tex that came with my TeXLive had couple of spelling
mistakes (and was a lot smaller than the one that came with my MikTeX),
which meant that all other fonts but Helvetica worked (I found out about
it because my text in Helvetica didn't get diacritics and all others did -
and \showbodyfont went all bad with Helvetica) - if it seems that some
fonts work and others don't, try to isolate the problem font by font.

> > Tip: Try fonts if other things run. Most beginners find that extremely
> > complicated.
>
> I do not understand what you mean by "Try fonts".

He wants to same thing I found about in a fairly hard way: Do not worry
about fonts as long as your computer modern works, i.e. you get something
on the screen.
When you have gotten about everything else to work, you will be better
equipped to deal with the fonts, that part really is very tricky (been
there, done that, still learning, MikTeX never got them right).

mari
(finally enjoying the delights of standard postscript fonts.)