[XeTeX] Text output garbled after system update -- your ideas?

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:51:21 +0000 schrieb Kārlis Repsons:

>>> So a whole mix! Type1 mixed with TT/OT, which gets taken from two
>>> locations... Will have to delete the TT version of Libertine then...
>>> Type1 too?
>> 
>> It is already bad enough that e.g. two ttf-version of a font can
>> give trouble but it is really a nuisance that you can't tell xetex
>> which type of fonts it should use and that it mix type1 with
>> ttf/otf.
> 
> So throwing texmf-dist/fonts/{opentype,truetype,type1}/public/libertine out 
> and running `fc-cache -fsv` as root gave me a temporary fix.
> I write so, because I'll have to figure out still how to actually manage fonts, 
> taking in account XeLaTeX specifics...

Yes it is not easy. texlive and miktex can't start to simply install
fonts in the system folders. So if fonts come with the tex system
they end in the texmf tree - and this can lead to double versions. 


> I wonder about this in particular: can it ever be necessary to use fonts from 
> texmf-dist/fonts instead of system fonts? For example, I installed TeXLive 
> 2009 with its fonts, 10 years pass, I still keep that installation and use if 
> necessary... Could it happen that I really need those old fonts from there, 
> not their new versions, should they appear?

It could be useful to have an archive of older font versions
somewhere for debugging or to be able to recompile a file with
exactly the same font. But apart from this I don't see much reasons
to keep old fonts.

The case is different for different font formats: pdftex/latex+dvips
still needs type1 fonts. So removing them could be a problem. 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer