All, I hadn't expected to create such a confusion so I will try to restate my problem. On MacOSX Gerben has provided a restructured version of tetex where the locations of some files have changed. I am not sure of the detailed reasons for this but it certainly much easier to keep up to date. For instance he even provides an updater for ConTeXt to beta or standard using a single click (I only just found that! Thanks Gerben). Now the line texfont --en=8r --ve=urw --co=courier --so=auto Should work but instead gives TeXFont 1.8 - ConTeXt / PRAGMA ADE 2000-2003 processing aborted : unknown subpath ../fonts/afm/urw/courier The subpath exists but maybe at a different root /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/fonts/afm/urw/courier thus I presume that --fontroot should be invoked especially since the help gives me --fontroot=path : texmf font root (default: /usr/local/tetex/share/texmf.local) So I try texfont --en=8r --ve=urw --co=courier --so=auto --fontroot=/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/ on one line of course processing aborted : unknown subpath ../fonts/afm/urw/courier is the result. The apparent error is that the --fontroot option doesn't work. Hopefully that is all I wanted fixed. Texfont has been upgraded with many new options but this 'bug' remains. TIA -- Nigel