Advice on fonts

[andyfelt]

Sorry to bother you, but I've manually installed on a texlive linux system, and I'm fighting the good fight on fonts. LuaLaTeX seems to be finding the Kalam-Regular font in your fonts directory, but the metric data is not found. (?) Google tells me I need to make the tfm files? Do you have knowledge of this? Perhaps I missed obvious directions somewhere.

Alternately, I could just use another font - do you have a suggestion on which one?

error message in TeXstudio when trying to compile nende.tex with LuaLaTeX:
player-input.tex: error: 4: Font \TU/Kalam(0)/m/n/17.28=[template/fonts/Kalam-Regular.ttf]:mode=node;language=dflt; at 17.28pt not loadable: metric data not found or bad. ...ext-color}{\CharacterNameValue} \end{fitbox}}

[matsavage]

Hi Andy, this could just be a code path issue, which directory are you building from?

What is the command you are using to build the sheet with, I think it should be

lualatex characters/name.tex

[TehStoneMan]

Hello. I am having the same issue on Windows, using VSCode and LaTeX Workshop. I noticed this in the logs:

 (c:/texlive/2025/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/fontenc.sty
Package: fontenc 2025/07/18 v2.1d Standard LaTeX package
) (c:/texlive/2025/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.cfg)))
luaotfload | db : Reload initiated (formats: otf,ttf,ttc); reason: File not found: "template/fonts/Kalam-Regular.ttf".

c:/Users/User/texmf/tex/latex/DND-5e-LaTeX-Character-Sheet-Template/dndtemplate.sty:12: Package fontspec Error: 
(fontspec)                The font "Kalam-Regular" cannot be found; this may
(fontspec)                be but usually is not a fontspec bug. Either there
(fontspec)                is a typo in the font name/file, the font is not
(fontspec)                installed (correctly), or there is a bug in the
(fontspec)                underlying font loading engine (XeTeX/luaotfload).

For immediate help type H <return>.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.12 ...ghtFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]
                                                  

A font might not be found for many reasons.
 Check the spelling, where the font is installed etc. etc.

 When in doubt, ask someone for help!


luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0

c:/Users/User/texmf/tex/latex/DND-5e-LaTeX-Character-Sheet-Template/dndtemplate.sty:12: Package fontspec Error: 
(fontspec)                The font "Kalam-Regular" cannot be found; this may
(fontspec)                be but usually is not a fontspec bug. Either there
(fontspec)                is a typo in the font name/file, the font is not
(fontspec)                installed (correctly), or there is a bug in the
(fontspec)                underlying font loading engine (XeTeX/luaotfload).

For immediate help type H <return>.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.12 ...ghtFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]
                                                  

A font might not be found for many reasons.
 Check the spelling, where the font is installed etc. etc.

 When in doubt, ask someone for help!



c:/Users/User/texmf/tex/latex/DND-5e-LaTeX-Character-Sheet-Template/dndtemplate.sty:12: Package fontspec Error: 
(fontspec)                The font "Kalam-Regular" cannot be found; this may
(fontspec)                be but usually is not a fontspec bug. Either there
(fontspec)                is a typo in the font name/file, the font is not
(fontspec)                installed (correctly), or there is a bug in the
(fontspec)                underlying font loading engine (XeTeX/luaotfload).

For immediate help type H <return>.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.12 ...ghtFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]
                                                  

A font might not be found for many reasons.
 Check the spelling, where the font is installed etc. etc.

 When in doubt, ask someone for help!


luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0

c:/Users/User/texmf/tex/latex/DND-5e-LaTeX-Character-Sheet-Template/dndtemplate.sty:12: Package fontspec Error: 
(fontspec)                The font "Kalam-Bold" cannot be found; this may be
(fontspec)                but usually is not a fontspec bug. Either there is
(fontspec)                a typo in the font name/file, the font is not
(fontspec)                installed (correctly), or there is a bug in the
(fontspec)                underlying font loading engine (XeTeX/luaotfload).

For immediate help type H <return>.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.12 ...ghtFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]
                                                  

A font might not be found for many reasons.
 Check the spelling, where the font is installed etc. etc.

 When in doubt, ask someone for help!



c:/Users/User/texmf/tex/latex/DND-5e-LaTeX-Character-Sheet-Template/dndtemplate.sty:12: Package fontspec Error: 
(fontspec)                The font "Kalam-Bold" cannot be found; this may be
(fontspec)                but usually is not a fontspec bug. Either there is
(fontspec)                a typo in the font name/file, the font is not
(fontspec)                installed (correctly), or there is a bug in the
(fontspec)                underlying font loading engine (XeTeX/luaotfload).

For immediate help type H <return>.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.12 ...ghtFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]
                                                  

A font might not be found for many reasons.
 Check the spelling, where the font is installed etc. etc.

 When in doubt, ask someone for help!


luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0
luaotfload | aux : no font with id 0

Package fontspec Info: 
(fontspec)             Font family 'Kalam(0)' created for font 'Kalam' with
(fontspec)             options
(fontspec)             [Path=template/fonts/,Extension=.ttf,UprightFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold].
(fontspec)              
(fontspec)              This font family consists of the following NFSS
(fontspec)             series/shapes:
(fontspec)              
(fontspec)             - 'normal' (m/n) with NFSS spec.:
(fontspec)             <->"[template/fonts/Kalam-Regular.ttf]:mode=node;language=dflt;"
(fontspec)             - 'bold' (b/n) with NFSS spec.:
(fontspec)             <->"[template/fonts/Kalam-Bold.ttf]:mode=node;language=dflt;"

The font files ARE in the 'template/fonts' folder within the main Character Sheet package folder.

[matsavage]

@TehStoneMan / @andyfelt

What was the command you ran?

If you’re not running the nix version, you may need a font config file https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/517747

[TehStoneMan]

OK, after some investigation and experimentation, it seems under Windows, it needs to be an installed system font for LaTeX to recognise it.
When I installed the Kalam font into my system and changed the line in dndtemplate.sty from

\newfontfamily\entryfont{Kalam}[Path=template/fonts/,Extension=.ttf,UprightFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]

to

\newfontfamily\entryfont{Kalam}[Extension=.ttf,UprightFont=Kalam-Regular,BoldFont=Kalam-Bold]

everything worked as expected.

[andyfelt]

Thank you @TehStoneMan and @matsavage. Removing the path from the font declaration in dndtemplate.sty also worked for me. For the record, I'm using TeXstudio on raspberrypi OS, compiling with LuaLaTeX.