27-04-2015 Using fonts installed in local texlive - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange sign up log in tour help TeX ­ LaTeX Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and related Take the 2­minute tour × typesetting systems. It's 100% free, no registration required. Using fonts installed in local texlive I have installed texlive at ~/texlive . I have installed collection­fontsrecommended using tlmgr . Now, ~/texlive/2014/texmf­dist/fonts/ has several folders: afm , cmap , enc , ... , vf . Here is the output of tlmgr info helvetic package: helvetic category: Package shortdesc: URW "Base 35" font pack for LaTeX. longdesc: A set of fonts for use as "drop­in" replacements for Adobe's basic set, comprising: ­ Century Schoolbook (substituting for Adobe's New Century Schoolbook); ­ Dingbats (substituting for Adobe's Zapf Dingbats); ­ Nimbus Mono L (substituting for Abobe's Courier); ­ Nimbus Roman No9 L (substituting for Adobe's Times); ­ Nimbus Sans L (substituting for Adobe's Helvetica); ­ Standard Symbols L (substituting for Adobe's Symbol); ­ URW Bookman; ­ URW Chancery L Medium Italic (substituting for Adobe's Zapf Chancery); ­ URW Gothic L Book (substituting for Adobe's Avant Garde); and ­ URW Palladio L (substituting for Adobe's Palatino). installed: Yes revision: 31835 sizes: run: 2377k relocatable: No cat­date: 2012­06­06 22:57:48 +0200 cat­license: gpl collection: collection­fontsrecommended But when I try to compile: \documentclass{article} \usepackage{helvetic} \begin{document} Hello World! \end{document} It gives an error: ! LaTeX Error: File `helvetic.sty' not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: sty) I was expecting a document typeset using Helvetica font. Obviously, I am doing something wrong. How do I set things right? {fonts} {texlive} edited Oct 10 '14 at 13:36 asked Sep 23 '14 at 17:12 deshmukh 646 3 15 This is rather a broad question as it stands. I suggest starting here and trying out some of the different fonts supported by (pdf)LaTeX. You can also use system fonts with XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX but for your current purposes, you are concerned with specifially TeX fonts and the Font Catalogue shows you what is available and how to use them. – cfr Sep 23 '14 at 22:08 If you use XeLaTeX for compiling, then you can use any font installed for your system, independently of whether it is specifically supported by TeX Live. If you want to benefit from TeX­specific support files, http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/202767/using-fonts-installed-in-local-texlive 1/8 27-04-2015 Using fonts installed in local texlive - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange obviously you'd need to pick a package which supports that. You can still use 'standard' TeX fonts, but you don't have to. (Some packages, as Andrew Cashner mentions now configure the fonts using a switch method such that appropriate options are chosen to use the fonts for XeLaTeX, if that's what you use. In other cases, you'd be better off using system fonts with fontspec .) – cfr Oct 3 '14 at 21:30 @cfr I am aiming to have a ~/texlive installation that is, kind of, portable. So, want to be as independent of system fonts, etc. as possible – deshmukh Oct 8 '14 at 13:42 2 Then you don't want to use fontspec . Use the font catalogue for samples and examples of how to use font packages. You can still use XeLaTeX if you wish. – cfr Oct 8 '14 at 14:54 1 Answer Since you wish to use TeX Live rather than system fonts, it is better to look for information about the font packages available to you than to create lists of font files. This is because most packages will include many different files under texmf­dist/fonts and the relation of those files to package names will not always be at all obvious. (The directory names are likely to be a better guide but still not great.) To see why this is, it is necessary to think a little bit about the different kinds of files included under texmf­dist/fonts . On my machine, I have the following: afm/ cid/ cmap/ enc/ fea/ lig/ map/ misc/ ofm/ opentype/ ovf/ ovp/ pfm/ pk/ sfd/ source/ tfm/ truetype/ type1/ vf/ afm files are Adobe Font Metrics. TeX doesn't use these directly, as far as I know, but they are used to create other files. cmap files are used to support searching. They help to map characters in PDFs, for example, to characters which can be searched. (They may have further uses I'm not aware of.) enc files specify various encodings for fonts which TeX needs to figure out which 'slot' contains which character. fea and lig are feature and ligature files for use with fontspec , I think. map helps TeX to figure out which font file corresponds to which font, and whether the font encoding has been altered. opentype self­explanatory. pfm font metrics in a different format from afm files. The two can be converted into each other. pk pre­prepared fonts based on metafont sources. sfd ?? (FontForge source for fonts?) source metafont sources used to generate pk files (either above or on­the­fly during typesetting as required) tfm TeX font metrics generated from afm or pfm files together with other information. As far as TeX is concerned, these are fonts. They do not, however, include the glyphs. That is, they don't include the 'pictures' of characters. Instead, they contain information about the boxes needed to accommodate those characters, how to adjust the spacing between pairs of boxes, when to replace two boxes by a different box, box dimensions and more. (TeX typesets boxes. Like everything else, a character is a box.) These are not quite fonts as far as pdfTeX is concerned ­ it wants the pictures, too. truetype self explanatory. type1 somewhat self explanatory. These files contain nothing but pictures of characters. Without the metric information, they are not useful. (Postscript fonts are distributed with both type1 font files ( .pfb or .pfa ) and metric files ( .afm or pfm ). Unlike opentype and truetype fonts, there is no single file which is a postscript type1 font. vf complicated. These are 'virtual fonts'. They tell TeX how to create new fonts from other fonts. For example, if you wanted to combine oldstyle figures and ligatures from a supplementary font with the characters from a primary font, you could create a virtual font which took the appropriate characters from each and combined them. TeX can then treat this font as a single font for typesetting purposes. The virtual font files tell TeX where to find the various bits of information and glyphs it needs to construct the virtual font. (Traditionally, oldstyle figures, small capitals and ligatures were often provided in a separate .pfb or .pfa file. To use these with TeX, you need to create a combined font http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/202767/using-fonts-installed-in-local-texlive 2/8 27-04-2015 Using fonts installed in local texlive - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange using characters from the additional file along with those from the main one.) These files can also be used to 'fake' glyphs which are not present in the actual font, to approximate small capitals or an oblique shape, and to provide various other features. Rather than trying to work out from the contents of these directories which fonts you have, then, it would be better to look for font packages which provide a coherent interface to groups of files which together support entire fonts and their families. Since you are using TeX Live, you can get some information about the font packages available to you using tlmgr . There are several different options here. tlmgr uses a concept of 'taxonomies' which can be used to search for packages according to various classifications e.g. characterization or keyword . Let's take keyword as an example. We need to know first which keywords are available: tlmgr search ­­list ­­keyword will give us a list: Keywords: Computer Science DVI file manipulation Humanities Mathematics (the subject) MetaFont, Metapost Physics, Chemistry, Biology Social Science URLs, hyperlinks abbreviations, acronyms abstract alignment appendix arrays, matrices arrows article style author bibliography, formatting bibliography, management book style boxed text, frames calendar, schedule caption changebars chapters, sectioning collections, proceedings, conferences color columns, multiple columns commutative diagrams computer code, verbatim text cross references dates and times distributions, whole systems document style dropped letter, often initial letter editing, graphical work environment encodings, Unicode equations, subequations exams, exercises, answers external programs, interfacing figures, floating matter foils, overhead slides font selection fonts, mathematics fonts, text footnotes, end notes front matter, end matter glossary, dictionary graphics created inside TeX (pictures, PSTricks, PGF, etc.) graphics from outside TeX headers, footers http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/202767/using-fonts-installed-in-local-texlive 3/8 27-04-2015 Using fonts installed in local texlive - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange help, documentation, FAQ hyphenation include file index, indexing justification languages other than English letters, envelopes, labels lists, bullets literate programming macro programming make, compilation systems marginal material minipage music output format PDF, PostScript output format other than PDF (HTML, etc.) output viewer page breaks page geometry (margins, etc.) page numbering page styles paper size, orientation paragraph presentations (powerpoint­like, using a beamer) proof sheets (typographical) proofs publisher's style punctuation quotation, poetry report style scientific units spacing, horizontal or vertical symbols, mathematical symbols, text table of contents tables text decoration (underline, etc.) theorems thesis style title, maketitle vita, CV, resume watermark, draftmark word processor conversion wrap around a figure Several here are related to fonts: font selection , fonts, text and fonts, mathematics .