14 ms·

The LaTeX Font Catalogue

192 points by the-mitr 5y ago

the-mitr 5y ago
This has been my go to resource for choosing the fonts before starting a new LaTeX project.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
  This is great. But how do you use them? I've not ever been able to successfully figure out how to bring new fonts a latex doc (I use miktek).
  - armalipeddi 5y ago
    if you click through to the pages for any of the fonts, there is usage instructions and a working example.
  - zauguin 5y ago
    You really want to use LuaLaTeX (if you don't do so already) and then you can just load any font on your system using \usepackage{fontspec} \setmainfont{Whatever your font's name is} Especially you don't have to deal with installing old Type 1 fonts which is messy, especially when they are not included in your TeX distribution. You can also follow the instructions in the catalog which for some fonts show how to use them in pdfLaTeX, but these days pdfLaTeX mostly makes sense if you want to submit to journals which do not accept modern engines and such journals probably don't allow you to change the font anyway.
  - the-mitr 5y ago
    now lot of fonts are available as packages just including those packages will change the default font even with pdflatex for example: \usepackage{libertine} or \usepackage{kpfonts} should get you going
Topolomancer 5y ago
An excellent resource. With `fontspec` and `xelatex` or `lualatex`, choosing a font can sometimes be as easy as this: \setmainfont{EB Garamond} \setsansfont{Myriad Pro} \setmonofont{IBM Plex Mono} No additional packages required!
- andrepd 5y ago
  Unfortunately XeTeX brings some compatibility problems as well as bugs, compared to pdfLaTeX.
  - TheRealPomax 5y ago
    Like? Because I've never seen XeLaTeX do something that made me go "wow time to go back to the legacy tex-that-doesn't-understand-unicode->DVI->PDF route".
    - dr_hooo 5y ago
      Legacy would be pdflatex in this case, which generates PDFs directly and works with unicode without issues. However, I would also be interested in cases which xelatex doesn't handle too well.
      - zauguin 5y ago
        These are purely my own opinions and not official positions of any groups or organizations I am associated with. The biggest issues with XeTeX (compared mostly with LuaTeX, some of them also apply for pdfTeX) in my opinion are (roughly ordered for importance) 1. the missing support for microtypesetting features, especially font expansion 2. Missing support for new OpenType features. I consider especially variable fonts to be important, but I know that there are also many users missing color font features. 3. The font selection system which uses completely different lookup paths for font names and filenames leads to extreme confusion for users, especially since it's system dependent. 4. It shares the problem with older engines that many things like colors, underlines, etc. require special invisible nodes which can influence line-breaking in unexpected ways. 5. (From a programmers perspective) adding advanced PDF features under XeTeX tends to be much more complicated because of the DVI based backend which makes it harder to control the PDF file directly. That being said, I would take XeTeX over pdfTeX any day, but I don't see much reason to use it if LuaTeX is available as an alternative.
necovek 5y ago
Unfortunately, no language coverage is listed for any of the fonts: I generally care about fonts I can use both for Serbian (Cyrillic) and English texts, including simultaneously (programming, maths).
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Yes. Greek is what I need to know support for.
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
  When you follow to the CTAN, there's Topics section on the right which has tags for Greek and Cyrillic fonts.
stared 5y ago
The default LaTeX font is stunningly beautiful! To the point that for me even looking at LaTeX-generated papers in an aesthetic experience. Recently, I was posting a preprint to arXiv. I intentionally removed a journal style, which changed the font to Times New Roman.
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  > The default LaTeX font is stunningly beautiful! You may be alone in that. I think the general consensus is that Computer Modern is pretty horrible.
  - benrbray 5y ago
    What?? I've never met anyone who thinks that. Personally I think it's a very hard standard to beat. I rarely see a document with a non standard font that wouldn't look better in computer modern. Especially for math.
    - magnio 5y ago
      Language and glyph support aside, the unbearable thinness of Computer Modern makes it very difficult to read on screen. Maybe it looks better in print, but for computer monitor, Latin Modern is a better alternative IMO.
      - Mikhail_Edoshin 5y ago
        Yes, it looks thicker in print [1]. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelyfox/4329034436 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelyfox/4329034436
        cpach 5y ago
        Is that Computer Modern? Wow. Looks very different from seeing it in a PDF.
      - tmoertel 5y ago
Santosh83 5y ago
Are these fonts available for use outside LaTeX? Seems like they're spread all over the place instead of collected in one repository.
- queuebert 5y ago
  There are the Tex Gyre fonts, but part of what makes Computer Modern in LaTeX look so good is the typesetting quality. I believe TeX actually solves a convex optmization problem to find the optimum inter-word spacing for each line while considering every line on the page. That's why you don't get those crazy large spacings in LaTeX that you sometimes see in Word.
  - maxnoe 5y ago
    One Paragraph, not the whole Page afaik
    - leephillips 5y ago
      There are whole-page optimizations as well. For example, to avoid clashes in color between adjoining paragraphs.
  - red_trumpet 5y ago
    Also hyphenation helps with avoiding large spacings.
  - bluenose69 5y ago
    If you employ the `microtype` package, latex will also be able to make adjustments to inter-letter spacing. This can improve results by evening out the "weight". The results are subtle, though -- nothing like the huge improvements that result from switching from msword to latex. Another slick trick is that latex (really, tex) lets you alter the weightings used in the optimization, paragraph by paragraph. And you can alter the weightings used in deciding where to put page breaks. You can also supply hints on hyphenation, for those rare cases in which the engine cannot decide what to do. (Note: the system adjusts hyphenation to the language, so e.g. those long words in German will be handled well.) The optimization scheme is a large part of what makes tex so good. That, and the understanding of mathematical notation. Anyone who wants to get insights into the early setup of tex might enjoy reading the following Knuth (1979). It's a very engaging read, for something that's technical. (Generally, Knuth is a great writer.) References Knuth, Donald E. “Mathematical Typography.” Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 1, no. 2 (March 1979): 337–72.
matoyce 5y ago
I always use the San-serif fonts in the catalog. It makes the document looks presentable and makes more readable.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
Twenty years ago I did typeset a 440 pages or so book using LaTeX. Sadly the editor wanted a "conventional" look and not the LaTeX one. I ended up using the "Utopia" (it's in the catalogue) font as the main font and sneaked as much "LaTeXism" as I could without getting caught ; ) The editor also had zero familiarity with Linux / LaTeX (it was all QuarkXPress back then) and hence wasn't confident in the digital files produced by LaTeX and the converters (say ps2pdf etc.) so in the end a high quality print copy ended being flashed. So it was still a partly "analog" process even though the computer-to-plate age had already started. Good memories.
- cpach 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what does flash refer to in this context?
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    Photolithography?
    - dhosek 5y ago
      Seems likely. I had an issue with issue one of Serif magazine where I could not move the high resolution scans of some images from my computer to the service bureau that was generating the film for the printers. We ended up have to go old school for that and having the printers photograph those pages and strip the image into the film to make the plates. This was back in the days of uploading files to the service bureau on a 28K modem (maybe I had 56K?) and the files wouldn't fit on the Bernoulli drive I had for sneakernetting large files from one place to another.
  - benrbray 5y ago
    book.swf
- brnt 5y ago
  I did the opposite once. In a time before I knew Latex, I had to hand in something typeset in Latex. Instead I used Open Office with the Computer Modern typeface, and handed in my work as PDF, and my teacher never figured it out.
tombert 5y ago
The monsters who make LaTeX don't have Comic Sans. I guess I need to stick with XeLaTeX :)
- jansan 5y ago
  The legendary CERN slides: https://www.slideshare.net/xzxzxz/atlas-higgs-cernseminar2012 https://www.slideshare.net/xzxzxz/atlas-higgs-cernseminar201...
rpmuller 5y ago
I also like this page for latex fonts: https://r2src.github.io/top10fonts/ https://r2src.github.io/top10fonts/
8589934591 5y ago
I use roboto light sans serif font for my resume. Are there better alternatives to CM for reading on the screen? I found mlmodern so far to be a good alternative, but would like to know from others as well.
robertwt7 5y ago
One of the best thing that ever happen to me is learning LaTeX to write my paper.. since then, I wrote my resume, cover letter, and everything else with it Results are beautiful and highly customisable
- Breza 5y ago
  I have only dabbled in it yet every project ends up looking stunning. I'm a corporate data scientist and I'm considering using it for more of my research findings and the like.

192 points by the-mitr 5y ago

the-mitr 5y ago

This has been my go to resource for choosing the fonts before starting a new LaTeX project.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
This is great. But how do you use them? I've not ever been able to successfully figure out how to bring new fonts a latex doc (I use miktek).
- armalipeddi 5y ago
  if you click through to the pages for any of the fonts, there is usage instructions and a working example.
- zauguin 5y ago
  You really want to use LuaLaTeX (if you don't do so already) and then you can just load any font on your system using \usepackage{fontspec} \setmainfont{Whatever your font's name is} Especially you don't have to deal with installing old Type 1 fonts which is messy, especially when they are not included in your TeX distribution. You can also follow the instructions in the catalog which for some fonts show how to use them in pdfLaTeX, but these days pdfLaTeX mostly makes sense if you want to submit to journals which do not accept modern engines and such journals probably don't allow you to change the font anyway.
- the-mitr 5y ago
  now lot of fonts are available as packages just including those packages will change the default font even with pdflatex for example: \usepackage{libertine} or \usepackage{kpfonts} should get you going

Topolomancer 5y ago

An excellent resource. With `fontspec` and `xelatex` or `lualatex`, choosing a font can sometimes be as easy as this: \setmainfont{EB Garamond} \setsansfont{Myriad Pro} \setmonofont{IBM Plex Mono} No additional packages required!

andrepd 5y ago
Unfortunately XeTeX brings some compatibility problems as well as bugs, compared to pdfLaTeX.
- TheRealPomax 5y ago
  Like? Because I've never seen XeLaTeX do something that made me go "wow time to go back to the legacy tex-that-doesn't-understand-unicode->DVI->PDF route".
  - dr_hooo 5y ago
    Legacy would be pdflatex in this case, which generates PDFs directly and works with unicode without issues. However, I would also be interested in cases which xelatex doesn't handle too well.
    - zauguin 5y ago
      These are purely my own opinions and not official positions of any groups or organizations I am associated with. The biggest issues with XeTeX (compared mostly with LuaTeX, some of them also apply for pdfTeX) in my opinion are (roughly ordered for importance) 1. the missing support for microtypesetting features, especially font expansion 2. Missing support for new OpenType features. I consider especially variable fonts to be important, but I know that there are also many users missing color font features. 3. The font selection system which uses completely different lookup paths for font names and filenames leads to extreme confusion for users, especially since it's system dependent. 4. It shares the problem with older engines that many things like colors, underlines, etc. require special invisible nodes which can influence line-breaking in unexpected ways. 5. (From a programmers perspective) adding advanced PDF features under XeTeX tends to be much more complicated because of the DVI based backend which makes it harder to control the PDF file directly. That being said, I would take XeTeX over pdfTeX any day, but I don't see much reason to use it if LuaTeX is available as an alternative.

necovek 5y ago

Unfortunately, no language coverage is listed for any of the fonts: I generally care about fonts I can use both for Serbian (Cyrillic) and English texts, including simultaneously (programming, maths).

jtbayly 5y ago
Yes. Greek is what I need to know support for.
ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
When you follow to the CTAN, there's Topics section on the right which has tags for Greek and Cyrillic fonts.

stared 5y ago

The default LaTeX font is stunningly beautiful! To the point that for me even looking at LaTeX-generated papers in an aesthetic experience. Recently, I was posting a preprint to arXiv. I intentionally removed a journal style, which changed the font to Times New Roman.

SeanLuke 5y ago
> The default LaTeX font is stunningly beautiful! You may be alone in that. I think the general consensus is that Computer Modern is pretty horrible.
- benrbray 5y ago
  What?? I've never met anyone who thinks that. Personally I think it's a very hard standard to beat. I rarely see a document with a non standard font that wouldn't look better in computer modern. Especially for math.
  - magnio 5y ago
    Language and glyph support aside, the unbearable thinness of Computer Modern makes it very difficult to read on screen. Maybe it looks better in print, but for computer monitor, Latin Modern is a better alternative IMO.
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 5y ago
      Yes, it looks thicker in print [1]. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelyfox/4329034436 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelyfox/4329034436
      - cpach 5y ago
        Is that Computer Modern? Wow. Looks very different from seeing it in a PDF.
    - tmoertel 5y ago

Santosh83 5y ago

Are these fonts available for use outside LaTeX? Seems like they're spread all over the place instead of collected in one repository.

queuebert 5y ago
There are the Tex Gyre fonts, but part of what makes Computer Modern in LaTeX look so good is the typesetting quality. I believe TeX actually solves a convex optmization problem to find the optimum inter-word spacing for each line while considering every line on the page. That's why you don't get those crazy large spacings in LaTeX that you sometimes see in Word.
- maxnoe 5y ago
  One Paragraph, not the whole Page afaik
  - leephillips 5y ago
    There are whole-page optimizations as well. For example, to avoid clashes in color between adjoining paragraphs.
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  Also hyphenation helps with avoiding large spacings.
- bluenose69 5y ago
  If you employ the `microtype` package, latex will also be able to make adjustments to inter-letter spacing. This can improve results by evening out the "weight". The results are subtle, though -- nothing like the huge improvements that result from switching from msword to latex. Another slick trick is that latex (really, tex) lets you alter the weightings used in the optimization, paragraph by paragraph. And you can alter the weightings used in deciding where to put page breaks. You can also supply hints on hyphenation, for those rare cases in which the engine cannot decide what to do. (Note: the system adjusts hyphenation to the language, so e.g. those long words in German will be handled well.) The optimization scheme is a large part of what makes tex so good. That, and the understanding of mathematical notation. Anyone who wants to get insights into the early setup of tex might enjoy reading the following Knuth (1979). It's a very engaging read, for something that's technical. (Generally, Knuth is a great writer.) References Knuth, Donald E. “Mathematical Typography.” Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 1, no. 2 (March 1979): 337–72.

matoyce 5y ago

I always use the San-serif fonts in the catalog. It makes the document looks presentable and makes more readable.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

Twenty years ago I did typeset a 440 pages or so book using LaTeX. Sadly the editor wanted a "conventional" look and not the LaTeX one. I ended up using the "Utopia" (it's in the catalogue) font as the main font and sneaked as much "LaTeXism" as I could without getting caught ; ) The editor also had zero familiarity with Linux / LaTeX (it was all QuarkXPress back then) and hence wasn't confident in the digital files produced by LaTeX and the converters (say ps2pdf etc.) so in the end a high quality print copy ended being flashed. So it was still a partly "analog" process even though the computer-to-plate age had already started. Good memories.

cpach 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what does flash refer to in this context?
- jjgreen 5y ago
  Photolithography?
  - dhosek 5y ago
    Seems likely. I had an issue with issue one of Serif magazine where I could not move the high resolution scans of some images from my computer to the service bureau that was generating the film for the printers. We ended up have to go old school for that and having the printers photograph those pages and strip the image into the film to make the plates. This was back in the days of uploading files to the service bureau on a 28K modem (maybe I had 56K?) and the files wouldn't fit on the Bernoulli drive I had for sneakernetting large files from one place to another.
- benrbray 5y ago
  book.swf
brnt 5y ago
I did the opposite once. In a time before I knew Latex, I had to hand in something typeset in Latex. Instead I used Open Office with the Computer Modern typeface, and handed in my work as PDF, and my teacher never figured it out.

tombert 5y ago

The monsters who make LaTeX don't have Comic Sans. I guess I need to stick with XeLaTeX :)

jansan 5y ago
The legendary CERN slides: https://www.slideshare.net/xzxzxz/atlas-higgs-cernseminar2012 https://www.slideshare.net/xzxzxz/atlas-higgs-cernseminar201...

rpmuller 5y ago

I also like this page for latex fonts: https://r2src.github.io/top10fonts/ https://r2src.github.io/top10fonts/

8589934591 5y ago

I use roboto light sans serif font for my resume. Are there better alternatives to CM for reading on the screen? I found mlmodern so far to be a good alternative, but would like to know from others as well.

robertwt7 5y ago

One of the best thing that ever happen to me is learning LaTeX to write my paper.. since then, I wrote my resume, cover letter, and everything else with it Results are beautiful and highly customisable

Breza 5y ago
I have only dabbled in it yet every project ends up looking stunning. I'm a corporate data scientist and I'm considering using it for more of my research findings and the like.