The code posted below is correct. I had corrupted font files, this has nothing to do with TeX.

Original Question

I am trying to use Han Sans fonts in my XeLaTeX document installed via TeXLive2018. I downloaded the *.otf files and moved them to texmf-local/font/opentype/public/SourceHanSansCN/ (for chinese) and updated the file database.

Now I tried to use the fonts via fontspec like the following example:

documentclass{article}



usepackage{fontspec}



setmainfont[

    Path={C:/portable_xelatex/texmf-local/fonts/opentype/public/SourceHanSansCN/}

]{SourceHanSansCN-Normal.otf}



begin{document}

    Test

end{document}

This did not work.

I read about changing setmainfont[...]{...} to setmainfont{...}[...] which didn't change anything (like expected). Also I removed the Path. I added and removed the trailling slash. I added and removed the curly brackets around the path. I changed the underscore to _. I removed the file extension. Nothing of this worked.

I always get the errors Package fontspec Error: The font "SourceHanSansCN-Normal" cannot be found. and Font TU/SourceHanSansCN-Normal.otf(0)/m/n/10=[SourceHanSansCN-Normal.otf]/OT at 10.0pt not loadable: Metric (TFM) file or installed font not found. ^^I.

After looking around in the web even more I found the texmf-var/fonts/conf/fonts.conf. I added my directory (C:/portable_xelatex/texmf-local/fonts/opentype/) to the xml file as a directory. The errors are still the same.

I also tried to put the fonts in the same directory as the .tex file. Also there I get the same error.

At last I read about fc-list. I didn't really understand the help text. I didn't get what output to expect. For me fc-list simply returns nothing. I was expecting to see all the installed fonts. But as I said I am not even sure if that is the expected output.

What am I doing wrong?

PS: I am trying to set up a portable installation which should run on linux too. If it is possbible I would like to include relative paths only. I also do not want my local fonts/ directory to be used. (If it is used it doesn't matter but the compilation should not depend on the usage of the local fonts.)