TeX Live, LyX and fonts

LemurFromTheId · n00b Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 64 Location: Finland

Even though I know almost everything and I'm extremely tough guy and generally cool in most ways, I'm an absolute nøøb when it comes to TeX, LaTeX, LyX and other mixed-case subjects.

I've installed texlive and lyx and all their dependencies without difficulties and everything seems to work fine. But there's one thing that bugs me: texlive comes with huge amount of fonts (texlive-fontsextra), but how can I use them in LyX? LyX → Document → Settings → Fonts lists less than 15 serif fonts and only a couple of them are actually usable for my purposes (I love Palatino, though). I've been RTFMing like there's no tomorrow, but it hasn't gotten me very far.

Oh, and extra points for anyone who tells me the purpose of these directories: /usr/share/texmf, /usr/share/texmf-dist and /usr/share/texmf-site.

\kthxbye{}

alex.blackbit · Advocate Joined: 26 Jul 2005 Posts: 2397

this may help.

LemurFromTheId · n00b Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 64 Location: Finland

Thanks for the link, but I have to admit, I still don't quite get it.

It appears I can load some fonts using \usepackage{font} command and some using \renewcommand*\rmdefault{font}\normalfont\upshape. And apparently the directory name is used for {font}. So, /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/antt → \renewcommand*\rmdefault{antt}\normalfont\upshape → wham, I've got Antykwa Torunska. Now, how am I supposed to know that? And why doesn't \usepackage{antt} work ("LaTeX Error: File 'antt.sty' not found.") when /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/adobe/utopia → \usepackage{utopia} does?

Cool. As you can see, I've no idea what I am doing. There has to be a better way.

Are the fonts accessible through LyX's menus hardcoded somehow? I would like to see every installed font appear in the drop-down menus. I guess that's not going to happen. But what surprises me is that after many-many-many-hours of googling and crawling through wikis and e-mail archives I've found no actual evidence of anyone else having similar problems (and to be honest: when I'm having difficulties with software, I'm rarely the only one). It seems like changing and installing new fonts is either the most trivial thing imaginable or it's so obviously difficult that no one is even going to try.

I found some PDF's here. The Font Installation Guide sounds pretty neat. Hmm. "You will need the following additional manuals while working with this guide". Stacked together, that's 532 pages. I guess I've grown too comfortable with my own little reality.

Do people really deal with this stuff?

alex.blackbit · Advocate Joined: 26 Jul 2005 Posts: 2397

ok, i am not an expert either, and have absolutely no clue about lyx. when i create latex files, i use vim for that.
at least i know why \usepackage{antt} does not work, but \usepackage{utopia} does.
all the things that work with \usepackage have a .sty file. in this case it's in /usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/psnfss/utopia.sty.
the font file alone is not enough.
and... not all things in latex are really logically correct and/or have a understandable structure.
please don't try to understand everything that latex does. you will fail. just accept some crazy facts.
and... latex was not intended to do what you want it to do, that's "latex, use this font for this paragraph!".
normally you would use some word processor like e.g. ooo writer for that.
all the packages that exist for using fonts were made out of special needs of people. and that's also why not everything works the same way.

i hope that helps
alex

mv · Watchman Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 6749