Fonts - Old Content

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Font handling in ConTeXt is “strange” for LaTeX users. It's a system of abstraction and aliases, complex and mighty … But there's help:

• Adam Lindsay's page focuses on typography (OpenType, Unicode etc.), esp. on MacOS X
• Bill McClain's ConTeXt beginners page has also a lot about fonts
• font installation with texfont by Pragma
• Integrating TrueType Fonts into ConTeXt by Thomas A. Schmitz (PracTeX Journal)
• ConTeXt's font mechanism in detail by Pragma
• making outlines by Pragma
• Here you can try out several TeX fonts online (PDF interface!)
• Troubleshooting: solving TeXfont problems.
• The ConTeXt way of using fonts are TypeScripts.
• Installing a TrueType font, step by step. If you just need to install a TrueType font, this may be what you are looking for.
• Installing Expert Fonts: Minion Pro by Idris Samawi Hamid; contains step-by-step instructions, from preinstallation to writing typescripts
• URW Garamond
• Font Handling Internals
• Pseudo Small Caps by Vit Zyka

Basic Hints

Some hints by Taco from the mailing list on 2005-11-20:

Q: How up to date or out of date is the information in mfonts manual?

A: It looks like it is still quite up-to-date, but some of the examples it gives may no longer be the very best and latest way of doing things, and possibly there are some new developments that do not get as much attention as desired (like texfont, and the issues arising from font map files). Overall, the document appears accurate, though.

An important thing to remember is this:

ConTeXt does not share font metric conventions with LaTeX.

(at one point it started doing so, like supporting the Karl Berry naming scheme and the PSNFSS style font family names, but that has since been abandoned).

Another important thing is that it also does not share font map files with LaTeX and, specifically,

ConTeXt does not make pdfetex read pdftex.map.

(this is at the root of a great many problems reported by users only familiar with PSNFSS)

The preferred format for metric files in ConTeXt is

<vendor>/<familyname>/<encoding>-<fontname>.tfm

for metrics and

<encoding>-<vendor>-<familyname>.map

for the mapping files.

• <fontname> is usually derived from the font source (afm or ttf),
• <encoding> is a 'controlled' list, (see Encodings and Regimes)
• <vendor> and <familyname> are user-supplied (at install time).

There are ways to trick ConTeXt into using different conventions, but if you do that you are likely to run into trouble.

Configuration

• Using psnfss metrics in ConTeXt
• Matt Gushee about virtual fonts
• Fonts rely on Encodings and Regimes, and it helps to know what happens underneath the hood, from time to time.
• In newer distributions, map files belong in …/fonts/map/pdftex/context!
• Don't forget to look at cont-sys.tex!

Available Free Fonts

• Free Math Fonts - overview of different free Math fonts
• GFS Didot - Latin, full set of polytonik Greek, small caps, oldstyle figures, full f-ligatures
• ... many more to be added ...

Hints by Language

• general: Encodings and Regimes
• Arabian and Hebrew (Idris? other ArabTeX specialists?)
• Chinese
• Greek
• Russian
• Vietnamese