After using LaTeX for a long time, you might be bored for default fonts and would like to install some new good looking fonts. If you will use XeTeX engine to compile your tex file, you don’t have to worry about the installation. However, for pdfTeX engine, we do need a proper installation. If you use TeXLive like I do, you will complete the installation easily in three steps.
Where to install
To make the fonts installation independent to distribution of TeXLive from different years, fonts should go into the local TEXMF-tree. If your TeXLive installation is not heavily customized, you will find a folder named texmf-local under the texlive folder. Otherwise, you can find its location with the command
kpsewhich -expand-var='$TEXMFLOCAL'
In the following, texmf-local will be used for this location. To install the font, you may copy these subdirectories in your font folder to TEXMFLOCAL.
Registering the font map file
The map file fontname.map must be registered for use with dvips, pdftex, xdvi. To register a map, you may use the command
updmap-sys --enable Map=fontname.map
If your system is Linux or MacOX, use the following command
sudo updmap-sys --enable Map=fontname.map
Remark: π π π Another way to register a font map is to modify the udpmap.cfg file in the web2c folder (create the folder and/or file under texmf-local if they do not exist) by adding a line Map fontname.map. The benefit of this method is that the font will be ready to use if you install a new version of TeXLive.
After creating the updmap.cfg file, you may need to run updmap-sys.
Refresh the file-name database
Once you have done with the first two steps, in the command line, run the following command to refresh the file-name database so that the TeX engines will find your fonts.
mktexlsr
Final remark
For more information on how to install fonts manually or how to create TeX compatible fonts, you may check the following two webpages Manual font installation and FontPro.
Enjoy TeXing!