Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ mathabx | Standard Math Symbols overwritten

[david_a_clarke]

Hello;

For my first post, other than my intro...

I would like to install a character set for astronomical symbols (e.g., \Sun = a circle with a dot in the middle, \Jupiter = the fancy 24 ligature, etc.). Now, I have found and installed mathabx and while they're OK (they're bit-maps, a bit blurry, and not terribly imaginative), the package also overwrites many of the standard LaTeX math symbols (e.g., integral signs, rightarrow, infinity, etc.) with, in my opinion, inferior-looking symbols (again, bitmaps and not as crisp).

Does anyone know:

1. How to include only the new symbols from a package and ignore all those previously defined by something else? Simply putting mathabx first in the list of \usepackage triggers a whole host of other errors. It seems amssymb, amsmath, etc., must come before mathabx, which then clobbers some of the AMS characters.
2. Better yet, is there a set of nicely crafted astronomical symbols created for LaTeX that won't clobber anything else already defined?

Thanks.
cheers, David

[localghost]

Section 5 of the mathabx manual suggests to use options for turning certain font families on or off.

Code: Select all

\usepackage[
  matha,
%  mathb,
  mathx,
]{mathabx}

I'm sure the package manual has some more details about that.

As an alternative for only the astronomical symbols you could take a look at the marvosym package. Other possible packages specifically for astronomical symbols might be found in »The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List«.


Thorsten