Michael Sharpe's 2014 Tugboat Article on Additions to the Tex Font
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TUGboat, Volume 35 (2014), No. 2 135 Recent additions to TEX's font repertoire naissance | lover of Lucrezia Borgia, major influence in standardizing the Italian language, creator of the Michael Sharpe madrigal form, and later, Cardinal of the Church. Garalde family (The love letters between him and Lucrezia Borgia were considered by Lord Byron to be among the The first 150 years of the printing industry, beginning \prettiest" ever penned.) Modern revivals of the font with Gutenberg in 1450, bear a striking resemblance used for De Aetna usually involve the name Bembo, to the early years of the personal computer industry. though the basic free version is called Cardo, an Both were intensely commercial enterprises, though obvious contraction of Cardinal Bembo. The fairly with some high-toned gloss | Bibles then, scientific recent fbb package is based on Cardo, but with many computing now. However, the real money driving changes | the ancient glyphs were stripped out, a the printers of the late 15th century was to a con- kerning table was constructed for the Roman font, siderable extent indulgences | big money-makers for there being none in Cardo, and a Bold-Italic variant the Church as well as printers. As I learned from was created. Glyphs were added in all variants so the fascinating books of Andrew Pettegree [2, 3], that fbb has a full slate of textcomp characters and some monasteries were ordering from printers and figures are available in proportional lining and old- selling to sinners hundreds of thousands of generic style as well as tabular lining and oldstyle. Small indulgences as soon as the technology to do so be- Caps are provided in all variants. (Cardo had small came available. The closest modern analogue may be caps only in Roman, regular weight.) the claim that pornographic movies drove the rapid growth of VCR and, later, DVD players. Sample of fbb: The Lutheran Revolt of the early 16th century This is f bb, a free font package similar to Bembo. against the excesses of the Church did not hurt print- It has Small Caps, a fine Italic, and a choice of number ers, as they worked overtime to bring forth the vo- styles such as tabular oldstyle 0123456789. luminous tracts generated by the religious conflict. Fifty years later, in Paris, Garamont introduced (One must bear in mind that the first newspaper did and continued to refine his Roman and Italic fonts, not appear until 1605.) based initially on the De Aetna font and Griffo’s later Given the importance of printed media in that italic. Among the notable changes was the taming of period, it is not surprising that much talent coalesced De Aetna, reducing its ascenders and its over-arching around the technology, and the fonts developed dur- `f', planing off some of its more prickly features and ing that brilliant advance are, in my opinion, some of creating more elegant capital letters. The remarkable the most appealing ever created. They are referred account of Garamont's fonts, their origins and influ- to now as \old-style" or Garalde in honor of Aldus ences, by Beatrice Warde [1] is highly recommended. Manutius and Claude Garamont [Garamond]. It contains, among other things, reproductions of Gutenberg worked with fonts that we now call much of the famous Egenolff-Berner specimen from Blackletter, which remained the dominant typeface 1592. The short version is that most Garamond in the German countries through the first part of the fonts created in the early twentieth century were in 20th century. Caxton, the first English printer to fact based on later fonts by Jannon (c. 1620), not use Gutenberg's technology, apprenticed in Belgium Garamont. Stempel Garamond (1925) is an excep- and set up the first printing house in England in tion, being based on a copy of the Egenolff-Berner 1476, and also used Blackletter exclusively. The specimen (see [1]) owned by the Stempel foundry. first Roman font was developed by Nicolas Jenson By the late sixteenth century, fine printing was of Venice, then the dominant commercial center of well established in parts of Europe, though not in Europe, in the 1470s. Twenty years later, there ap- England, judging by the mediocre quality of printing peared one of the great figures in publishing history | in Shakespeare's plays published during that period. Aldus Manutius, also of Venice. Among other inno- Recent Garamonds (URW++ Garamond No. 8, vations, his company, the Aldine Press, invented the Garamond Premier Pro, EBGaramond) have followed pocket book, italic type, greatly reduced the cost of Egenolff-Berner and Garamont's metal punches which books, standardized punctuation (introducing the appear to have been passed down to the Plantin semicolon), redefined book layout, and, through its foundry in Antwerp. \punchcutter" Francesco Griffo, whom we would now LATEX now has a choice of two Garamonds: call a type designer, made a beautiful Roman font for the short book De Aetna by the poet Pietro Bembo, • garamondx is an extension of Garamond No. 8, who became a major literary figure in the Italian Re- adding small caps and oldstyle figures in both weights and both shapes. Because of the license, Recent additions to TEX's font repertoire 136 TUGboat, Volume 35 (2014), No. 2 which is rather permissive but does not allow { TeX Gyre Termes + newtxmath/STIX; charging a fee, it cannot be distributed as part { STIX (text and math). of TEX Live. Navigate to the url http://tug. • STIX math has an unparalleled collection of org/fonts/getnonfreefonts for a script you mathematical symbols and alphabets matched can download that will install garamondx on to Times; Unix-like systems. • STIX text fonts, as of version 1.1, lack some • ebgaramond (regular and italic only, no bold of the features of packages such as TeX Gyre yet) is a very fine realization of Garamond that Termes and newtxtext, but more is promised A was recently added with LTEX support. for 2.0.0 (http://stixfonts.org); Sample of garamondx: • the main difference between TeX Gyre Termes This is garamondx, an extension of URW++Gara- and newtxtext is that the latter has an option to mond No 8. It has Small Caps in all four styles, Italics use oldstyle figures as the default in text mode; and Bold Italics, and a choice of figures in all four styles, • MathTime (commercial but reasonably priced) such as tabular oldstyle 0123456789. is still a worthwhile Times-based math package Sample of ebgaramond: with symbols generally lighter than STIX and This is ebgaramond, a new realization of Garamond having a number of features distinct from STIX; based on the Ebenolf-Berner specimen. It has very nice • older choices such as mathptmx have now out- Small Caps, a very ne Italic, and a choice of gures in lived their usefulness. all four styles, such as tabular oldstyle 0123456789. Libertine: Other serifed roman families LinuxLibertine is no longer new, but has undergone many fairly recent changes. It works well with the Palatino: math package [libertine]newtxmath. In my opin- Named for the Italian writing master Giambattista ion, this is an excellent choice for both screen and Palatino, and inspired by Italian Renaissance fonts, print. A number of recent math e-publications have Palatino has a larger x-height than typical old-style used this combination. fonts and is more readable on-screen. It was one of the earliest fonts outside the Computer Modern Sample of libertine: Italic family to gain TEX support, and remains one of the This is LinuxLibertine. It has Small Caps, , best-represented fonts for TEX. and a choice of number styles such as tabular oldstyle 0123456789. • OpenType: { TeX Gyre Pagella + Asana Math; Baskerville: A \transitional" font (c. 1760), as was Plantin, the { TeX Gyre Pagella + Pagella Math. Times precursor. Baskerville (\the English Manu- • PostScript: tius"), was a master of fine detail, having been in the { newpxtext + newpxmath; furniture finishing business (japanning) for a number { TeX Gyre Pagella + newpxmath; of years. He set out to improve on Caslon, the then- { mathpazo (text and math), fewer features dominant font throughout England and its colonies. than the preceding; Baskerville's fonts, which bear the unmistakable her- { eulervm as math can be used for a more itage of oldstyle fonts, were favorites of Benjamin informal appearance. Franklin. Many commercial versions are available, • Kpfonts (complete text and math) is based on most notably Storm Baskerville Pro. Free versions URW++ Palatino clones, but has its own distinc- include: tive, light appearance. • Baskervald (BaskervaldADF) was not designed Times: with TEX in mind, and requires modifications Many choices are now available. to its ligature side bearings, its basic math char- acter heights, and its kerning tables. • OpenType: • (OpenType): { STIX (text + math), and its unofficial ex- Baskervaldx.otf, derived from BaskervaldADF, tension XITS; works OK with TEX. { TeX Gyre Termes + STIX math; • (PostScript): { TeX Gyre Termes + Termes Math. Baskervaldx + [baskervaldx]newtxmath works • PostScript: OK. Baskervald[x] lacks the high contrast that { newtxtext + newtxmath/STIX; gives Baskerville its distinction as a print font, Michael Sharpe TUGboat, Volume 35 (2014), No. 2 137 and when scaled up to an x-height that matches Sample of Heuristica: the italic, it becomes a rather heavy Roman This is Heuristica, an extension of Utopia. It has font. Small Caps, Italic, and a choice of number styles such • GFSBaskerville | for Greek, not Roman use. as tabular oldstyle 0123456789. • LibreBaskerville | lacks Bold Italic, and is de- Charter: signed as a web font, with larger x-height, larger Bitstream contributed their four basic Charter fonts counters and wider spacing than fonts intended to the X Consortium under a very liberal license, for print output.