lilypond issue: no lyrics rendered (FreeBSD 11.2)

lilypond-issue-no-lyrics-freebsd-11.2.md

lilypond issue: no lyrics rendered (FreeBSD 11.2)

Yeah, I knew it was a missing font thing, but dang, there are a lot of moving parts.

First, make sure that the gsfonts package is installed (here's the FYI about it: https://www.freshports.org/print/gsfonts/)

$ sudo pkg install gsfonts

You can't tell it, but the original problem in lilypond was that it was trying to find (at least) one of these fonts (source: lilypond's configure script):

c059013l.pfb
c059016l.pfb
c059033l.pfb
c059036l.pfb

configure says that fc-list should be able to see those fonts. Problem is that even after you install gsfonts, fc-list cannot see those (4) fonts.

$ fc-list | grep -E 'c0590(13|16|33|36)l\.pfb'
$ 

gsfonts puts them here on my system (FreeBSD 11.2): /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts

However, that's not a directory that fontconfig utils (via the various fontconfig config files) look at (including fc-cache). But, I knew that /usr/local/share/fonts was a font directory -- that's where all the other fonts go (that you install via packages).

So, rather than mess with the fontconfig config files (and take time to read about them), I did the "cheap" thing and symlinked the ghostscript fonts into /usr/local/share/fonts:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts /usr/local/share/fonts/ghostscript

(Sue me.)

Then, run

$ sudo fc-cache

You should see that fc-list now sees those fonts (that lilypond needs).

$ fc-list | grep -E 'c0590(13|16|33|36)l\.pfb'
/usr/local/share/fonts/ghostscript/c059033l.pfb: Century Schoolbook L:style=Italic
/usr/local/share/fonts/ghostscript/c059013l.pfb: Century Schoolbook L:style=Roman
/usr/local/share/fonts/ghostscript/c059036l.pfb: Century Schoolbook L:style=Bold Italic
/usr/local/share/fonts/ghostscript/c059016l.pfb: Century Schoolbook L:style=Bold
$ 

Now, go back and generate your score (with lyrics) with lilypond. You should now see lyrics rendered.