[Tex/LaTex] Using Liberation font with pdflatex (no XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX)

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I am looking for a substitute for the Times font we are using throughout our documents. This is how we load our fonts:

\usepackage{txfonts}
\renewcommand{\ttdefault}{cmtt}
\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathtt}{OT1}{cmtt}{m}{n}
\SetMathAlphabet{\mathtt}{bold}{OT1}{cmtt}{b}{n}

(I know there's newtxfonts out by now, but that's not the issue here.)

The Linux Libertine font is an alternative which I could simply load using \usepackage{libertine}, but it's looking quite different from Times, and I'm not sure if this will be appreciated. Actually, I would prefer using the Liberation family, but so far I only found instructions that require the fontspec package, and hence the use of XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX. At the current stage, I would prefer not to add this additional requirement so that all documents still can be compiled with pdflatex.

So: Is there a way to use the Liberation font family in a pdflatex environment? (EDIT: In other words, has anyone packaged this font already for pdflatex, and I missed that in my search?)

If not: I have found The Installation and Use of OpenType Fonts in LaTeX — would this be the way to go to convert an OTF representation of Liberation for use with pdflatex? Which extra steps would be required to create an easy-to-use LaTeX package?

Also important for me, perhaps not worth a separate question: Can Liberation also be used as math font, or is there a math font that looks good in a Liberation document?

Best Answer

The Liberation font has not been packaged for pdflatex, yet. So your options are either XeTeX/LuaTeX with the fontspec package, or to convert the font to Type 1 fonts yourself. The TUGboat article you linked to is a good description, but maybe you prefer Stephan Lehmkes's answer. This particularly uses True Type fonts, which is the format the Liberation fonts come in.

Concerning a fitting math font, I suggest to look at the newtxmath package, or mtpro2, whose lite version is free to use.

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