Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ Gentium under LaTeX?

[benti]

Dear all,

I have been wasting several nights now at attempts to generate type-1 font files of SIL's Gentium font for use under LaTeX. I am no TeX guru, and only understand the absolute basics of font handling; that's probably part of the reason why my attempts are so unsuccessful.

As I understand from some minimal instructions found on the web, the easiest way would be to convert the original TTF font to OTF format using FontForge, and then generate the metrics files using otftotfm. Sounds simple enough, but it doesn't work, and since I barely know what I'm doing...

If someone could provide me with a fool-proof, step-by-step list of things to, that would be absolutely wonderful. I get the impression from FontForge that it is capable of generating tfm files as well, which would make the use of otftotfm redundant, right? Anyway, some help is MUCH appreciated.

The one reply I do not need, is people to say I should use
XeTeX I don't want to, for a number of reasons.

thanks,
Niels

[josephwright]

Have you looked at the gentium support available on CTAN?

[benti]

That's what I started with, but I got the impression from the readme information that I could only be used under ConTexT, not under LaTeX?

[phi]

You can write a simple .fd file:

Code: Select all

\ProvidesFile{T1gentium.fd}[2009/08/01 Gentium font family]
\DeclareFontShape{T1}{gentium}{m}{n}{<->ec-gentium-roman}{}
\DeclareFontShape{T1}{gentium}{m}{i}{<->ec-gentium-italic}{}

Code: Select all

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\usefont{T1}{gentium}{m}{n}
\lipsum
\end{document}