Tell me more ×
TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and related typesetting systems. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 7 down vote favorite
3

Has anyone been able to install the MinionPro package on OS X? I usually install (and update) TeX Live through MacPorts and the first package I have ever found that wasn't already included is MinionPro. Googling for this returns me "manual" instructions for a seemingly endeavour of paths, conversions, and failed installations. So I was wondering: am I missing some package already available in MacPorts?

share|improve this question
3  
Firstly, do you have the font Minion Pro? The package only provides support for using the font with LaTeX if you already have it; it doesn't provide the font itself (which is expensive). (Just asking this because it's not always clear from the documentation!) If you do have the font, and installing the package seems cumbersome, you could use XeTeX which can use system fonts directly. – ShreevatsaR Sep 1 '10 at 13:38
Yes, I do have Minion Pro installed in my system -- although I honestly don't know how, but I suppose it either came with Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Office. – Hugo S Ferreira Sep 1 '10 at 16:12

5 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Hugo, you say "I do have Minion Pro installed in my system -- although I honestly don't know how, but I suppose it either came with Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Office", however before you can use the Minion Pro OTF fonts on your system, they first need to be converted into Type1 format. I'm guessing you haven't done this yet (please correct me if I'm wrong). The MinionPro README on CTAN contains the exact instructions you'll need to step through to convert your otf files to pfb, where to place them in your texmf, how to install them, etc. Assuming you've already installed the MinionPro package, the font and map files properly on your system, the main things you'll need to do are:

  1. create a temporary directory
  2. install LCDF Typetools into it (download these from www.lcdf.org/type)
  3. install convert.sh into it (contained in scripts.zip at CTAN, although you probably have downloaded this already)
  4. make a directory under it called otf and copy your Minion Pro otf files there
  5. run convert.sh (this creates a directory called pfb containing your Type1 fonts)
  6. copy your new pfb files into the appropriate place in your texmf
  7. texhash and updmap or their equivalents on your system (see the README)

The number of steps might appear onerous compared to usual one-click package installations, but they're really not too difficult. Just follow them quite precisely and you'll be right. You'll be rewarded with a very handsome dual-purpose text and math typeface, with the added bonus of the equally handsome and quite complete MnSymbol symbols set at the end.

share|improve this answer
should not all this procedure already be part of tex distributions such as texlive or miktex? We would just have to transform the otf (when we have them) into pfb fonts and everything else would be already set-up. – pluton Sep 25 '10 at 20:07
@pluton, no, it's not as simple as all that. While this procedure makes the business of otf->pfb reasonably do-able for moderately competent people, the job only ends at this point for fonts like Minion Pro where some good soul has also put together the associated afm (and potentially also the fd, vf, map) and if possible also the .sty files. This procedure gives you the pfb's, no more. Anyway, fontspec (on the rising stars of XeTeX and LuaTeX but not LaTeX) will probably make this an academic exercise in the end. The days of Type1 fonts look as though they're numbered. – Geoffrey Jones Sep 26 '10 at 0:37
The thing is that I tried to install the MinionPro package today and could get the pfb fonts, and pretty much all the described procedure, on my Miktex distribution. Then, I tried to Latex-compile a minimal example using MinionPro but it could not find some kind of Miktex-makemf.exe or a MinioPro-Regular something font and I could not believe it. In my dreams, we would just have to prove that we own the MinionPro otf fonts and everything else would be ready-to-use. – pluton Sep 26 '10 at 0:52
up vote 6 down vote

By far the easiest way to use the wonderful Minion Pro font (installed on my Mac via Adobe CS4) is with XeTeX as ShreevatsaR suggests.

e.g.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\setromanfont{Minion Pro}

\begin{document}

This can then be compiled with xelatex on the command line, or using the proper setting in TeXShop.

If you prefer to use pdftex then you must install the font in a format that TeX can read (only XeTeX can read the true type font used by modern system software). This in my experience is a bit of a pain, but is described here: http://www.tug.org/mactex/fonts/fonttutorial-current.html

share|improve this answer
That's certainly true, but even under XeTeX, I prefer to go the package route with (and pretty much only with) Minion Pro, since a) the package provides one of the most well thought out, cleanest, richest sets of font access commands of any I've ever encountered (wish all were so good), and b) the package pulls in and integrates seamlessly with MnSymbol. – Geoffrey Jones Sep 1 '10 at 23:49
and microtype is not supported by xelatex, yet. – pluton Sep 25 '10 at 20:05
Depends on what microtype features you're interested in. Margin kerning is currently in beta testing see: xetex.tk/mediawiki/index.php/… – Peter Sep 30 '10 at 19:19
Fontspec options are quite easy to setup, too. – Joseph Aug 14 '12 at 0:39
up vote 1 down vote

I had prepared a certain important document (a couple of hundred pages) using the MinionPro font a few months back, and I am required to make critical edits to it now. My compile failed today because my current computer, which is a Mac, did not have the MinionPro LaTeX package installed. Googling led me to this page and a couple of others, and thanks to these, I was able to make MinionPro available to pdflatex on my Mac without breaking much of a sweat. Here are the exact steps which I followed, in the hope that they may be useful to someone else in the same predicament. They are based on the MinionPro README.

This set of steps installs the font into a folder in the user's home directory, so these may be useful if you are averse to modifying files in system (i.e, non-home) directories. Also, if you are confused as to which updmap.cfg to edit (there seem to be at least four on my system), then you can try seeing if step 11 below is of use.

  1. Find the Minion Pro font (otf) files on the Mac. These are hidden in the Adobe Reader application image (is that the right word?). Go to Finder -> Applications, open the context menu for "Adobe Reader" (two-click on it), and select "Show package contents". This will mount the image file. The otf files are now available as /Applications/Adobe Reader.app/Contents/Resources/Resource/Font/MinionPro*.otf

  2. The otfinfo command mentioned in the README was already available in my system, so I presumed that LCDF Typetools were already installed (perhaps as part of TexLive?). I ran $ otfinfo -v /Applications/Adobe\ Reader.app/Contents/Resources/Resource/Font/MinionPro-Bold.otf
    and got
    Version 2.103;PS 2.000;hotconv 1.0.67;makeotf.lib2.5.29150

  3. As per the README, this means that my font version is 002.000. Also, I have only the base weights, and so I downloaded the following files:

    scripts.zip
    metrics-base.zip
    enc-2.000.zip

  4. My TEXMFLOCAL (as found out using kpsexpand '$TEXMFLOCAL') is outside my home directory (somewhere in /usr/local/...), and so I decided to install the new font into my TEXMFHOME, which is ~/Library/texmf. This directory did not exist, so I created it.

  5. I did Step 1 of the README ...

    $ mkdir /tmp/MinionPro
    $ cd /tmp/MinionPro
    $ unzip ~/Downloads/scripts.zip

  6. ... and then Step 2:

    $ cp /Applications/Adobe\ Reader.app/Contents/Resources/Resource/Font/Minion*otf otf/

  7. And Step 3:

    $ ./convert.sh

  8. Then Step 4:

    $ mkdir -p ~/Library/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe/MinionPro
    $ cp pfb/*.pfb ~/Library/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe/MinionPro

  9. Step 5:

    $ cd ~/Library/texmf/
    $ unzip ~/Downloads/metrics-base.zip
    $ unzip ~/Downloads/enc-2.000.zip

  10. Instead of the remaining steps in the README (which looked scary), I did the following as advised by a discussion on comp.tex.macosx :

    $ updmap --enable Map=MinionPro.map

This gave a few lines of output which seemed to indicate that The Right ThingTM was being done, and after this I was able to compile my document using pdflatex as usual.

EDIT: I also came across the issues described here, here and here, and solved them by editing a couple of text files as described in the respective answers.

share|improve this answer
Wow! Thanks! Finally I can use MinionPro in LaTeX (XeLaTeX is a bit slow and works somewhat strange with some packages). – NVaughan Apr 5 '12 at 22:31
up vote 4 down vote

There's a new (and maintained) set of scripts for generating Type1 fonts for MinionPro (and, as an added bonus, MyriadPro and CronosPro), which worked well for me.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

In addition to gphilip (answered Mar 12 at 12:45)

I've solved my problem descrived below. First of all it took a few hours to figure out that you must write in terminal the following:

kpsexpand '$TEXMFHOME'

which returns in Windows (from Vista upwards)

Users/USERNAME/texmf

Then the procedure described below goes just perfect, if you follow that route, i.e. cp pfb/*.pfb /Users/USERNAME/texmf/fonts/type1/adobe/MinionPro. With that steps should work fine.

share|improve this answer
What means “described below”? Note, that the sorting can manually be changed. You should set a link or say “<User>’s answer”. Nevertheless it is not an answer, so I flagged it (I know, your reputation isn’t big enough for commenting). And you other “answer” you should delete. – Speravir Nov 3 '12 at 22:31
is in reply to gphilip answered Mar 12 at 12:45 and about my reputation... don't screw me with that... I've spend a lot of time solving that problem and my solution may work for others – mauricio vargas Nov 3 '12 at 22:48

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.