[tex-live] [win32] opentype fonts from $TEXMFLOCAL

[Diederick C. Niehorster]

Hi All (just new to the list, plannign to stay ;) ),

I have been posting about this issue on the XeTeX list already, but
for further follow-up, this list seems more appropriate. Quick recap
and problem statement, the solution I got to is below. I am wondering
if there is any better solution as it does not seem fully
satisfactory.

Just two days ago I moved from miktex to texlive 2009 (fresh install,
fully updated). I was having trouble with XeTeX not detecting the
opentype fonts i put in $TEXMFLOCAL
(C:\texlive\texmf-local\fonts\opentype and underlying folders). I ran
fc-cache on that folder with the --verbose switch. The first time i
run it, it tells me it is caching the fonts in all the subdirectories,
the second time it tells me it is skipping them as they are already in
the cache, so that seems to have worked correctly. However, when I run
"fc-list > fc.log" and search in that log file (no grep on windows
for as far as i know) I find no references to the fonts that were just
cached.

I'd like to keep my fonts in $TEXMFLOCAL so they stay with updates and
I do not want to install them into the windows fonts directory, don't
want to put too much in there.

A working solution is this:
I came accross this thread:
http://www.tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2008-November/019261.html

Solution:
Based on comments in the texmf.cnf file, I edited the texmf.cnf in
texlive/2009, where you should add your local changes only.
first I tried adding my opentype fonts folder to a promising looking
key, but that didn't work:
OPENTYPEFONTS =
.;$TEXMF/fonts/opentype//;$OSFONTDIR//;$TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/opentype
Then, I followed the suggestions in the thread and got things to work:
(1) add to texlive/2009/texmf.cnf:
   FONTCONFIG_PATH=$TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/conf
   FC_CACHEDIR=$TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/cache
(2) create the directories:
   $TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/conf
   $TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/cache
(3) copy everything in $TEXMFSYSVAR/fonts/conf/
   to $TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/conf/ and then edit the
   file $TEXMFLOCAL/fonts/conf/fonts.conf to include
   the line <dir>C:/texlive/texmf-local/fonts/opentype</dir>

I am not sure this is the best way to go about it, I don't really like
having a full local copy of fonts.conf, overriding a possibly updated
$TEXMFSYSVAR/fonts/conf/fonts.conf. I would just like to add that one
directory to it. I am wondering if there is a way analogous to having
a updmap-local.cfg where you only specify your local changes/addition
to updmap.cfg, but then for fonts.conf?

Best and thanks!
Dee