What character sets do you require?

Is this papers that you then ‘publish’ yourself, or things to get submitted to academic journals etc.? Don’t forget that in the latter case, the publisher will throw away your font choices and use their in-house fonts anyway...

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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

Installing fonts in (La)TeX has always been a pain, for which you can get some relief at the TeXhax mailing list (texhax@tug.org). Recently, XɘTeX (mailing list at xetex@tug.org) has made it possible to use OpenType fonts in (La)TeX. Also, if you don’t mind learning a new Τεχ-based system, there’s ConTeXt that also has some support in that direction.

—ℐℴℯℓ

If you use MiKTeX and Windows, this program can convert True Type fonts into TeX-usable fonts: MiKTeX TTF Font Installer.

XeTeX is definitely the easiest route to using more typefaces, but beware that not every typeface has all the math support that you might need. See for example, Stephen Hartke’s article in the PracTeX Journal on math fonts.

For regular (PDF)LaTeX, see the excellent Font Installation Guide by Philip Lehmann. Also, there are several articles about font installation in the PracTeX Journal.

In addition to the Font Installation Guide, the LCDF typetools are a very easy way to install OpenType fonts into LaTeX. There is an automatic mode that is almost automatic. I think there’s one configuration—the updating updmap if I remember correctly—that’s not automatic. These comments are based on my experience running LaTeX under Linux. I haven’t tried doing this on Windows.

Edit: OK, I hate to be one of those Linux-using, command-line loving people who throw the word “easy” around indiscriminantly. After looking up the scripts I wrote to install fonts with otftotfm, I’d say the correct phrase is “easier than it used to be.” And it’s writing of the .fd files for use with LaTeX that’s not automatic. There appears to be a script called otfinst that automates even more of the process.

Scott Thatcher