[texhax] How to use fonts in LaTeX ...

[William F. Adams]

On Jan 29, 2005, at 12:10 PM, Anand Sengupta wrote:

> I apologize if my question sounds too amateurish for the experts in  
> this mailing list.
>
> I would like to use nice fonts for my thesis - currently I am using a  
> template thesis that has lines like
> {\fontsize{20}{22}\usefont{OT1}{phv}{bc}{n}\selectfont\par\vspace*{0.1c 
> m}{ Doctor of Philosophy in Physics}}
> where the helvetica font has been used. I am guessing that phv stands  
> for helvetica in LaTeX-ese, bc is for bold and n is normal (i.e not  
> italics). I hope I am right.


> Where can I find the code names for other fonts (AvantGarde for  
> example). Can someone please send me an example (like the above) of  
> using other fonts in LaTeX ?

You system should have the psnfss documentation on it --- if you read  
that you'll get the answers to the above.

You should have a file psnfss2e.pdf or .dvi somewhere on your system in  
a path like:

texmf/doc/latex/psnfss

> Finally, much as I admire the mathematical equations produced by  
> LaTeX, why is it so hard and vexing to use fonts in LaTeX ? Why can't  
> there be a simple human understandable way of doing it ?

Because typesetting mathematics requires more characters than are  
typically available in a font and more information about a font than is  
made available by typical font interfaces, and Unicode is a fairly  
recent thing in terms of TeX's history and no one has yet finished a  
Unicode math font which has been made readily available.

William

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William Adams, publishing specialist
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