Subject: bug#52979: Modular texlive has problems finding fonts

From: Ricardo Wurmus <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2022 10:19:29 +0100

Ricardo Wurmus <[email-masked]> writes:

> Jelle Licht <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> We can disable this optimisation by setting ST_NLINK_TRICK at compile
>> time.
>
> That’s what I did, and it does let kpathsea traverse all the fonts.
> Unfortunately, in my tests it does not fix pdflatex.  It does, however,
> fix xelatex.
>
> Debbugging output suggests that pdflatex encounters the font file
> cmr10.tfm, but for some unknown reason doesn’t seem to be satisfied with
> it.

It finds cmr10.tfm and then later proceeds to search (with
“must_exist=1”) for bitmap fonts such as dpi656/cmr10.pk (cmr10.656pk)
or dpi659/cmr10.pk (cmr10.659pk).

That’s how it fails:

  !pdfTeX error: pdflatex (file cmr10): Font cmr10 at 657 not found

657 is the resolution.  The other sizes are due to
KPSE_BITMAP_TOLERANCE; it will also search for alternatives whose
resolution is close enough to the intended size.

I wonder why it bothers with bitmap fonts at all.  And why it looks for
this really odd resolution.  We have
texmf-dist/fonts/pk/ljfour/public/cm/dpi600/cmr10.pk.  Why doesn’t it
look for a font with resolution 600?  The resolution 657 must have been
computed somewhere.

-- 
Ricardo