General ⇒ Stylized Fonts

[Ian222]

I would like to use a stylized font in one area of my document, something that looks like calligraphy, or something of that sort. I am creating the document as a template for my supervisor, so I would like to prevent having a bunch of .sty or .cls files that have to be included for each document. Besides the standards, small caps, italics, etc., I have only found the oldgerm package to give stylized fonts. They aren't exactly what I was looking for.

Are there other stylized fonts available as standard packages? I am using Latex on a mac and I'm not sure what the distribution was. Thanks in advance.

[balfonsi]

If I understand well what you would like to use, you should try the Chorus font, in the TeX-gyre bundle of fonts. It's redesigned from Zapf Chancery. Here's the link to see the documentation (using this font).

http://www.dante.de/CTAN/fonts/tex-gyre ... c-info.pdf

The only problem, which may not be one for you, is that you cannot write maths with that font. You also have to see if it blends well with your main font.


Regards,
B.A.

[Ian222]

Thanks, but that seems more complicated than what I was looking for. Are there any stylized fonts that can be added simply by adding a single .sty file, or, even better, no extra files at all?

[balfonsi]

What seems complicated is the documentation of the bundle, which isn't really required for a normal use.

Anyway, without installing the whole TeX-Gyre bundle,you can use the zapf chancery from urw, which belongs to all distributions, and psnfss, which you do have (it is one of the 'required' packages). It has a style file which declares that font as the default for roman fonts. As I suppose you just want to use it on a small part of your document, the simplest way would be to define in your preamble an environment for that purpose, say calligraphic (I suppose you use T1 encoding; if you use OT1, just modify accordingly):

\newenvironment{calligraphic}%
{\usefont{T1}{pzc}{m}{it}}%
{}%

That's all. The other files required to use the font (.fd, .tfm, .vf, .pfb and .afm) are already installed either in psnfss or in the bundle for the free urw fonts. In the document, you then have only to write

\begin{calligraphic}
blahblah...
\end{calligraphic}

Ordinary text....

I hope this is clear.
Best regards,
B.A.

[Ian222]

Thanks, that's clear now. I was looking for something a bit more stylized, similar to the oldgerman fonts, but a bit different. Thanks again for your help.

[balfonsi]

You can have a rapid overview of what's available for LaTeX in the TeX Catalogue on Line, 'topical' version: just search for 'fonts'.

B.A.