2.5.1 Finding fonts

The program searches for fonts using a number of mechanisms.

1. The -fp option (see item ` -F, --font-search=[keyword-value-list] ') specifies a colon-separated list of filename templates which should be searched for font PK files. If this is given on the command line, it overrides...
2. The DVI2BITMAP_PK_PATH environment variable, if defined, specifies a colon-separated list of filename templates which are to be searched for PK files.
3. If the program cannot find fonts using the environment variable, and if it was configured with support for the kpathsea library (see Section 5.1), then it should find PK files using the same mechanism other DVI processors use.
4. dvi2bitmap can be configured to use a script to find fonts. If the program was not configured to use kpathsea or the search fails, then the program invokes a script which knows where to find font files, given a search pattern, and which returns a single line containing a discovered font filename. See item ` --with-fontfinder'.

The third method is the ideal -- you should build dvi2bitmap using the kpathsea library if possible (see Section 5.1.1 for how to obtain it): it is because other DVI-processing programs like dvips and xdvi are built with the kpathsea library, that you normally never have to worry about where fonts live. The kpathsea library is generally integrated with the font-generation commands, and can be queried using the kpsewhich command.

There are one or two possible wrinkles with the third method. The path-searching library is very powerful and flexible, but it is possible to be tripped up by its configuration file.

Firstly, the program has to find the configuration file. The program should sort this out for itself at configuration time, but it is possible that you might have to give it some help. If you specify the TEXMFCNF environment variable, setting it to the directory which contains your TeX installation's texmf.cnf file, then this overrides the program's notion of where the configuration should be. You can find this file using the command kpsewhich cnf texmf.cnf.

Secondly, it's possible to break the configuration file. Certain TeX distributions (the ones that came with early RedHat 6.x distributions are ones I know about) are broken in an unfortunate way. See Section 2.5.2 for a discussion.