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Background

I cannot seem to find a solution that works and sufficiently explains what I need to do.

I do not use Latex much, so please explain as if I don't know how Latex works, because that's mostly true.

When I build a Latex file (using TeXStudio to generate PDFs, but I've also used other Tex IDEs), a gigantic log file is always created. The logfile itself is > 5 MB!!

The reason for this is a myriad of warnings captured in the log file like this (I have a Mac, if it matters):

/Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex (file /usr/local/texlive/2018/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map): fontmap entry for `ts1-zi4nr' already exists, duplicates ignored

Duplicates are ignored, the document compiles, but these warnings are so tiresome and tedious.

Attempts to Date

So, I looked into updmap and ran

updmap-user --listmaps

There are many maps (approx. 200), but they are all located in one file:

/usr/local/texlive/2018/texmf-dist/web2c/updmap.cfg

So I cannot delete that file, obviously, since it contains all the fonts.

After first trying to find an easy way to suppress all errors, and ineffectively using \hbadness=10000 to suppress them, I've just tried to ignore these senseless errors for months. But it slows down any progress I need to do any time I need to go back and touch Latex.

Please help, as I'm about to give up on Latex and go back to RevealJS, which cannot really do the job as well as Latex, for my purposes.

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  • does updmap-sys regenerate the pdftex.map above? If yes, check which cfg-file it loads.
    – Ulrike Fischer
    Oct 29, 2018 at 19:28
  • @UlrikeFischer I'm sorry, I just don't know enough about Latex to say. This is why I was asking to please be detailed and clear with instructions. Thanks!
    – Mike Williamson
    Oct 29, 2018 at 22:52
  • I have no mac, I'm on Windows. I can't give you clear instructions. Run updmap-says in a terminal and look what it says.
    – Ulrike Fischer
    Oct 29, 2018 at 23:20
  • @UlrikeFischer I don't have updmap-says available, only updmap, updmap-sys, and updmap-user. The help is a few pages long. The options to updmap that seemed most logical to try were --listmaps and --listavailablemaps. Other the others seem to be flags to set things, like --enable <MAPTYPE>. This is why I'm stuck: I can't make heads or tails of the Latex documentation. :( Thanks for your help!
    – Mike Williamson
    Oct 30, 2018 at 21:56
  • Oh come on. Use your brain. Which of the three variants could I have meant if you take possible typos into account? Run it without option to see what it does, which files it reads and which it writes.
    – Ulrike Fischer
    Oct 30, 2018 at 22:15

1 Answer 1

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I'm not sure how helpful this will be to other users, but the problem was that everything that LaTeX installed had the wrong file permissions.

I needed to go to all of the files installed under /usr/local/texlive/2018 (which was the default location for my Mac OS install) and change them all to be writeable.

It had nothing to do with duplicate files, despite the error that claimed as such.

If anyone else runs into a similar error, be sure to check updmap-sys, or really any updmap command, since they will all point you to where your fonts actually live. Then go ahead and fix all of their permissions.

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