I’ve prepared a presentation for my supervisor using LaTeX. The presentation is to mimic a version created using MS Powerpoint and in LaTeX, I used seminar package for formatting.

The tricky part is, by default, LaTeX uses Knuth’s CM fonts but I want to have MS Comic Sans for the content, so to mimic powerpoint to a high degree. Searching “comic sans latex” in google, you will find the link http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/comicsans/ or http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/comicsans/ (both are the same).

However, I cannot follow the instruction to install the CTAN package successfully. Finally, I do on my own way:

  • Find some way to get the MS Comic Sans TTF file: comic.ttf and comicbd.ttf
  • Get your ttf2pt1 ready, with the following commands: 
    $ ttf2pt1 -e -a comic.ttf
$ ttf2pt1 -e -a comicbd.ttf
  • Now you’ve created four files: comic.pfa comic.afm comicbd.pfa comicbd.afm
  • Afterwards, copy just these four files to somewhere, I place them in /usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/
  • Next, download the comicsans package from the two links above. You can either use wget to recursively download, or get a zip/tar.gz file of them.
  • For the downloaded package, extract it and look for a directory called texmf. Copy the whole directory to somewhere like /usr/local/share/texmf/*
  • Overwrite /usr/local/share/texmf/dvips/comicsans/comicsans.map to following: 
    rcomic8r ComicSansMS "TeXBase1Encoding ReEncodeFont" <8r.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomicbd8r ComicSansMS-Bold "TeXBase1Encoding ReEncodeFont" <8r.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comicbd.pfa
rcomiccyr ComicSansMS "T2AAdobeEncoding ReEncodeFont" <t2a.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomiccyrbd ComicSansMS-Bold "T2AAdobeEncoding ReEncodeFont" <t2a.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comicbd.pfa
rcomic7m ComicSansMS "TeXMathItalicEncoding ReEncodeFont" <texmital.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomicbd7m ComicSansMS-Bold "TeXMathItalicEncoding ReEncodeFont" <texmital.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comicbd.pfa
rcomic7y ComicSansMS "TeXMathSymbolEncoding ReEncodeFont" <texmsym.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomic9z ComicSansMS "ComicSansExtraEncoding ReEncodeFont" <csextras.enc </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomico8r ComicSansMS "0.167 SlantFont" </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomicbdo8r ComicSansMS "0.167 SlantFont" </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comicbd.pfa
rcomiccyro ComicSansMS "0.167 SlantFont" </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comic.pfa
rcomiccyrbdo ComicSansMS "0.167 SlantFont" </usr/local/share/texmf/fonts/ttf/comicbd.pfa
  • Then, do the following commands: (as root in Debian) 
    # cat >> /etc/texmf/updmap.d/00updmap.cfg
Map comicsans.map
(Ctrl-D)
# texhash
# update-updmap
# updmap
  • Now, finished. You can use the comicsans package in your LaTeX document as the manual says.