Text Formatting ⇒ `lmodern' causes \pounds to be dollar symbol in maths mode

[pandammonium]

Hi, I have the following code, which uses the the T1 font encoding and the lmodern package for compatability reasons:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}
Maths mode: $\pounds$; text mode: \pounds .
\end{document} 

You'll notice if you run this (I use PDFLatex), the maths mode pound sign is actually an italicised dollar sign. If you comment out the inclusion of the lmodern package, you get an italicised pound sign. Why is it doing this, and more importantly, how can I make it behave correctly?

Technical details: MiKTeX 2.7, WinEdt 5, Windows Vista SP1.

cheers,

pandammonium

[localghost]

I can comprehend this issue. The same occurs when using the kpfonts but not with the txfonts. "The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List" states that it should work in both math and text mode. This may be worth a report to the maintainers of the concerning packages.


Best regards
Thorsten¹

[pandammonium]

Thanks for your reply, Thorsten. The recommendation in the symbols document is what led me to use \pounds rather than \mathsterling and \textsterling in the first place! Looking further at the Symbols reference document, I think the problem must be to do with the fourth bullet point on p.78, although if I'm using font encoding T1, I don't see why it would be affected. Oh well.

I have notifed the mainainer of kpfonts, but it seems from the readme file of the lmodern package that no-one currently maintains it. I suppose I will just have to use the \mathsterling and \textsterling after all. Or change to txfonts. Thanks for that tip!

[localghost]

[...] I have notifed the mainainer of kpfonts, but it seems from the readme file of the lmodern package that no-one currently maintains it. I suppose I will just have to use the \mathsterling and \textsterling after all.

The CTAN entry for lmodern also contains the link to the homepage [1]. Perhaps you will find there any address to contact the maintainers.

[1] The Latin Modern (LM) Family of Fonts - GUST

[pandammonium]

Oh, I missed that, thanks! Unfortunately, I can't find any email addresses and I don't read Polish, which doesn't help, and the English version of the site is buggy! I did find some sort of FAQ, but I'm not sure that's the right place to report bugs - again, I don't understand the Polish.

Anyone know any Polish?!

[phi]

There is only one thread in comp.text.tex about \mathsterling (with a different problem):
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.tex ... 11a8154456
I think that simply nobody cares about \mathsterling, because a £ sign in math mode is highly unusual. The general recommendation in that thread is: Use \text{\pounds}.

[phi]

Oh, I missed that, thanks! Unfortunately, I can't find any email addresses and I don't read Polish, which doesn't help, and the English version of the site is buggy!

There is a readme file called README-Latin-Modern.txt that is probably included in every distribution. There you find some useful information, including the e-mail address of Bogusław Jackowski.

[pandammonium]

Thanks - I've emailed him.

In the meantime, using \text{\pounds} in a maths environment is unsatisfactory to me; I'd rather use \mathsterling because at least it is a maths mode command. However, I have switched to txfonts, because it behaves correctly without the need to fudge it.

Thanks for taking the time to help me, Thorsten and phi. Always appreciated.

Update (17/03/09): the maintainer of kpfonts has emailed me to say they will fix it as soon as possible.

Update (18/03/09): the maintainer of lmodern has emailed to say it will be fixed in the next version, which is under construction as we speak.