[tex-live] Installing TeX Live 2008 from the net : a review of steps taken and problems encoountered.

[George N. White III]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Philip TAYLOR
<Philip-and-LeKhanh at royal-tunbridge-wells.org> wrote:
>

> [...]
> Seeking to run the failed "fc-cache" by
> hand, I typed "fc-cache /?" to learn
> the required parameters and switches,
> but it appeared not to recognise "/?"
> and has gone away and done something
> (I know not what) and returned without
> issuing any message at all.
>
> I then searched the web for "fc-cache"
> incantations that rang a bell, and found
> "fc-cache -v -r", which I tried.  It too
> has failed : transcript below.
>
> ** Phil.
> --------
> Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
> (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
>
> O:\TeX\Live\2008>fc-cache /?
>
> O:\TeX\Live\2008>fc-cache -v -r
> C:/WINDOWS/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 635 fonts, 0 dirs
> C:/WINDOWS/fonts: failed to write cache
> [...]
> O:/TeX/Live/2008/texmf-var/fonts/cache: cleaning cache directory
> fc-cache: failed

On my WIndows XP system, fc-cache was "failing" until I removed some
Myriad ttf fonts  from
"C:\windows\fonts\fonts" that had otf versions in "C:\windows\fonts".
 I assume this was done
by Adobe Acrobat Reader, but haven't checked for the issue on other
machines.  My guess is that
fc-cache doesn't know what to do when you have the same font in
different formats
in one directory tree.  Linux systems have /usr/share/fonts/truetype
and /usr/share/fonts/opentype,
so the problem would not arise there.

Can you check C:\Windows\Fonts for the same fonts in different formats?

Fontconfig is used by a number of other popular applications such as
gimp and inkscape,
but they don't let you see the messages.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia