Using Adobe Minion Pro with LaTeX

Tags: howtos, latex

Published on Sunday, September 12, 2010

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This short note explains how to use the font "Adobe Minion Pro" with the LaTeX typesetting system.

Luckily, all the work has already been done by other people. Plus, the font is available for free by downloading Adobe Reader.

Preparation

Download an older version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Choose the .tar.gz for Linux. It is vital that you do not download the most recent version. Unfortunately, the font metrics (which we will install later) do not work with the most recent version of the font.
Extract the archive; the font is in the file COMMON.TAR in the directory Adobe/Reader8/Resource/Font.
Install otfinfo from /usr/ports/print/typetools (for FreeBSD users) or using the package manager of your choice.
Use otfinfo -v to inspect the fonts. For MinionPro-Bold.otf, I get Version 2.015;PS 002.000;Core 1.0.38;makeotf.lib1.7.9032. This version works for me.
If not already done, create a local texmf-structure. For the venerable teTeX-distribution, I had to set the environment variable TEXMFHOME to $HOME/.texmf. I also created the directories .texmf, .texmf-config, .texmf-var.
Copy updmap.cfg to $HOME/.texmf-config/web2c/. This file needs to be modified for the new font.
Run texhash

Font installation

Follow the excellent documentation from CTAN. You will be provided with detailed step-by-step instructions and some helpful scripts that convert the fonts. After placing everything in the correct directory (as the tutorial suggest), you are good to go: A simple \usepackage{MinionPro} should do the trick.

My gratitude goes to Achim Blumensath, Andreas Bühmann, and Michael Zedler for creating and maintaining the aforementioned package. Otherwise, I would have been hopelessly lost in the mazes of my own incompetence.