[texhax] Generating fonts as normal user

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 1 March 2010 Dan wrote:

 > In trying to compile a particular LaTeX document on a machine where I
 > am not root, LaTeX finds it needs to run mktextfm to generate a font.
 > Unfortunately, it tries to place the generated font somewhere in the
 > system fonts tree where I don't have the necessary permission to
 > create directories.
 > 
 > I know there's some way to configure mktextfm to put the generated
 > files in a per-user fonts tree, but can't remember how.
 > 
 > The Kpathsea manual encourages me to
 > 
 > setenv TEXMFVAR "~/.texmf"
 > 
 > but this doesn't make any difference.

It's better to consult the documentation describing your TeX
distribution.  If your system is teTeX, look for a file
"TETEXDOC.pdf", if it's TeX Live, look for a file "texlive[-en].pdf".

It would be helpful to know which TeX distribution you are using.

I suppose that you are using either TeX Live older than 2008 or teTeX.
The installer option which allowed users to share generated bitmap
fonts was dropped from TeX Live 2008+ for several reasons.  The fonts
are now created in user's HOME directories.

Please remove TEXMFVAR from the environment.  It's the wrong variable.

What you can try is to set the environment variable

VARTEXFONTS="/home/dan/.texfonts"

If this doesn't work, I fear that you have to read the documentation.

However, if this problem occurs on TeX Live 2008 or 2009 (if a program
called tlmgr exists), please send the .log file to the TeX Live
mailing list:

  http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-live

Regards,
  Reinhard

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