Tinytex: fonts.conf gets populated with `C:/Users/appveyor/.../TinyTeX` instead of actual user's path

[igelstorm]

Summary

After I install TinyTeX on Windows, the system is configured to look for fonts in a subdirectory of C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX, even though there is no user called appveyor and this directory doesn't exist. This means that TeX is unable to use any fonts that I have installed using tlmgr.

If I manually change C:/Users/appveyor/... to C:/Users/erik/... (my username) in C:/Users/erik/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-var/fonts/conf/fonts.conf, the system is able to find fonts. I would expect this config file to refer to the correct path right after I install TinyTeX for the first time.

If I understand correctly, AppVeyor is the service used to build TinyTeX, so I wonder if maybe this path is accidentally hardwired in at some point during the build process?

Session info

> xfun::session_info('tinytex')
R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19042), RStudio 1.4.1717

Locale:
  LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252 
  LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252   
  LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.1252
  LC_NUMERIC=C                           
  LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252    

Package version:
  graphics_4.1.0  grDevices_4.1.0 stats_4.1.0     tinytex_0.32.1 
  tools_4.1.0     utils_4.1.0     xfun_0.23

Steps to reproduce

Using Windows 10, logged in as the user erik:

1. In an R terminal, install TinyTeX: tinytex::install_tinytex()
2. In a PowerShell/cmd terminal, type: fc-cache -fv, and note the paths beginning with C:\Users\appveyor in the output:

PS C:\Users\erik> fc-cache -fv
Note that it needs some time to create caches,
especially if there are many large font files.
Wait with patience.

Font directories:
        C:/Windows/fonts
        C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype
        C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype
C:/Windows/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 1008 fonts, 0 dirs
C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype: skipping, no such directory
C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype: skipping, no such directory
C:/Users/erik/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-var/fonts/cache: cleaning cache directory

Workaround

In C:/Users/erik/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-var/fonts/conf/fonts.conf, change the lines:

<dir>C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype</dir>
<dir>C:/Users/appveyor/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype</dir>

to:

<dir>C:/Users/erik/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype</dir>
<dir>C:/Users/erik/AppData/Roaming/TinyTeX/texmf-dist/fonts/truetype</dir>

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[yihui]

Thanks for the report! I can see these absolute paths in texmf-var/fonts/conf/fonts.conf on macOS, too. @norbusan Is it possible not to generate the full absolute path in this case (portable mode)? Thanks!

[norbusan]

How should fonts then be made available? AFAIK fontconfig does not allow relative paths in fonts.conf, and thus it fails.

The code is in tlpkg/tlpostcode/xetex.pl, and it seems that the xetex package is pre-installed in tinytex, which would explain the problem.

What can be done is re-running the post-install action with tlmgr postaction xetex or similar (not sure now) on installation. Otherwise once cannot know where the actual files are.

Does this help?

[igelstorm]

If it helps, I can confirm that if I run tlmgr postaction install script xetex immediately after installing TinyTeX for the first time, the correct paths are set in fonts.conf. 👍

[yihui]

@norbusan @igelstorm Thank you so much for the super helpful tip! I'll do the post action in my installation scripts.