[tex-live] Query : prevent XeTeX from trying to create any font-related files

[Jonathan Kew]

On 30/03/2018 17:43, Philip Taylor (RHUoL) wrote:

>> kpathsea: Running mktextfm Optima
>>
>>
>> The command name is C:\Users\Public\TeX\Live\2018\bin\win32\mktextfm
>>
>> kpathsea: Appending font creation commands to missfont.log.
>>
> Now it is completely unclear to me why XeTeX is trying to create 
> TFM/MF/whatever files at all, since all fonts are referenced using the 
> quoted-string syntax that indicate to XeTeX that these are system 
> (Truetype/Opentype) fonts, not TeX fonts with associated TFM/MF/whatever 
> files.

IIRC (it's been a long time) quoting the name is not an absolute switch; 
it's treated as a hint to look first for a system font by that name, and 
only fall back to trying it as a TFM name if not found.

>  However, I am less concerned with /why/ it is trying to create 
> these files than I am in simply inhibiting the behaviour.  May I 
> therefore ask the /cognoscenti /how I can prevent XeTeX from trying to 
> create any font-related files at all ?

I haven't tried it, but my impression is that setting

MKTEXTFM = 0

in texmf.cnf (or maybe as an environment variable? not sure...) should 
disable the attempt to automatically create missing TFMs, which is what 
is happening here.

JK