texlive-basic @23152_1+doc Missing cork.enc encoding file?

[nstanger (Nigel Stanger)]

Upgraded to TL 2011, attempted to build a PDF from a long-standing LaTeX document and got the following:

% latex Conference1
[ ...etc... ]
% dvipdf Conference1
dvips: ! Couldn't find header file: cork.enc

(I’m using the latex/dvipdf route for this document because it uses PSTricks, but that has nothing to do with the problem. I can reproduce the problem with any LaTeX document simply by using latex/dvipdf.)

cork.enc doesn’t appear to exist in any texmf tree. Weirdly, however, as far as I can tell cork.enc wasn’t in TL 2010 either, yet the document builds fine under TL 2010 (and incidentally also did so under TL 2007 and 2009), so something has clearly changed somewhere. If cork.enc was to appear anywhere, it should presumably be in texmf-texlive-dist/fonts/enc/dvips/base.

The only thing I could find that explicitly mentions cork.enc is the xdvi config in texmf-texlive/xdvi, but this doesn’t appear to be significantly different from TL 2010, and is for xdvi, not dvips, so I think that’s probably not the cause.

I grabbed a copy of cork.enc from the catdvi distribution (the most recent version of it I could find, from ​http://www.ctan.org/pkg/catdvi) and dropped it into my personal texmf tree. This appears to have universally fixed the problem.

Let me know if there’s any other information you need.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

In the future, please fill in the Port field.

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

Hmm. This is surprising since, as you note, cork.enc has been gone for a while. I think the last version it was in was 2007, or maybe 2009. Any idea what's causing it to look for that file? Perhaps an old font?

One possibility is that in TL2011, the user-local texmf tree moved from ~/texmf to ~/Library/texmf, for compatibility with MacTeX. Maybe there's something in the latter that's causing a problem?

[nstanger (Nigel Stanger)]

Unlikely to be a texmf issue, as I’ve always used ~/Library/texmf for my user-local tree anyway, from the days of when I used to use teTeX. I always thought it was tidier than using ~/texmf ☺.

No real ideas on why it’s looking for it so far, but a font seems likely, as you suggest. The dvips output is singularly unhelpful ☹. I can’t see any verbosity options, and I doubt that it’s been built with the DEBUG option enabled, so the debug flags won’t be available.

The original document mentioned uses mathpazo, lmodern and pifont, so nothing particularly unusual there. I’m not sure what fonts the other document I tested uses, but I don’t think I’ve tested a document with just CM fonts. I’m upgrading my home machine first to identify what breaks before upgrading my work machine ☺, so I’ll check the font possibilities when I get home tonight.

[nstanger (Nigel Stanger)]

OK, considerable excavation has eventually unearthed a collection of map files that I created many moons ago (2009 or earlier) for various TrueType fonts that I use(d) a lot, almost certainly before I switched from teTeX to TeX Live. The fonts in question are:

Bitstream: Letter Gothic (blg), Futura (bfu), Monospace 821BT (bhv) Microsoft: Trebuchet MS (jtr) Monotype: Garamond (mgm)

The map files all reference cork.enc for the T1 encoding, which causes the error to kick in when you use one of those fonts under the T1 encoding. It’s still weird that they worked OK in TL 2010, though.

In any case, I obviously need to figure out what to substitute for cork.enc in the lines like these in the map files:

blgr8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-Roman <cork.enc <blgr8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont "
blgro8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-Roman <cork.enc <blgr8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont 0.167 SlantFont "
blgri8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-Italic <cork.enc <blgri8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont "
blgb8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-Bold <cork.enc <blgb8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont "
blgbo8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-Bold <cork.enc <blgb8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont 0.167 SlantFont "
blgbi8t LetterGothic12PitchBT-BoldItal <cork.enc <blgbi8a.pfb " CorkEncoding ReEncodeFont "

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any of this kind of font stuff, and the memory’s pretty rusty ☺. However, I think we can probably call this ticket closed at this point. Thanks very much for the pointers!

[drkp (Dan Ports)]

Glad to hear you figured out what was going on. I'm afraid I don't really understand the TeX font encoding mess very well myself, so I can't really help you there.