[XeTeX] fonts: where to find? how to activate bold face?

Peter Dyballa Peter_Dyballa at Web.DE
Tue Jan 24 20:34:00 CET 2012


Am 24.1.2012 um 14:08 schrieb Susan Dittmar:

> Does one of you know ad hoc how I could enable boldface for this font?

Not at once and not without further details.

XeTeX asks the fonts service of your operating system for fonts. It's possible that the font variants have slightly different names. Then the fonts service might fail to create a family. And similarly XeTeX fails. In that case you would have to declare:

	\setromanfont[UprightFont = *,
		BoldFont	  = *-Demi,
		ItalicFont	  = *-Italic,
		BoldItalicFont	  = *-DemiItalic,
		]{Argor Man Scaqh}

In this basic example a possible "fullname" (Argor Man Scaqh) is used (I don't understand the language which sets this name, could be it already names some font variant), then four variants are specified (UprightFont, BoldFont,  ItalicFont, BoldItalicFont) with font names each starting with "Argor Man Scaqh" (that's what the asterisk stands for) and then followed by either nothing (but it could also be -Regular or -Book or ...) or one of -Demi, -Italic, or -DemiItalic. Each of these font name "extensions" might be wrong, so that XeTeX cannot find the corresponding font, neither in this example and neither when you use a simple \setromanfont{Argor Man Scaqh}.

So you need to find out how the fonts are really named. This can be done with this command:

	fc-list : file fullname | egrep -i 'Argor|Man|Scaqh'

(Again an assumption, that any of the three words will reappear in names of the font variants.) If you get too many and disturbing lines, then filter a bit:

	fc-list : file fullname | egrep -i 'Argor|Man|Scaqh' | egrep -i '(o|t)tf'

If you are not interested in the names of the files in which the fonts are stored you can invoke:

	fc-list : fullname | egrep -i 'Argor|Man|Scaqh'

Or:

	fc-list : | egrep -i 'Argor|Man|Scaqh'

Actually this command is maybe the most useful, because it tells you the (PostScript) name of the font. And actually this name, without spaces, has to be used in my example above.


First step is to know what your system can offer. Second step is to set up your font declaration accordingly. Third step is to use and enjoy the result...


BTW, \setmainfont{} and \setromanfont{} are the same, one of them is enough, possibly the latter one which resembles more the average LaTeX use.

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

  Pete

Patriotismus ist die Überzeugung, dass unser Vaterland allen anderen Ländern überlegen ist, weil wir darin geboren wurden.
				(George Bernard Shaw)




More information about the XeTeX mailing list