Using fonts from the LaTeX Font Catalogue --- a few comments.

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 4 May 2021 15:42:27 +1200 schrieb Rolf Turner:


>> That will take you a page with a Text example, Usage and Style
>> example. And there is also a link to the LaTeX source of the
>> Text example.
> 
> I accessed this source file, and found it to be rather bewildering and
> unnecessarily complicated. 

You find a 100 line document with 11 lines of preamble complicated? 


> It loads the "scrartcl" package which I gather is part of the
> "Koma-script" bundle.  I don't really understand what Koma-script
> is all about,

scrartcl is used in the example as it offers commands to change the
font of the sectioning easily, and so allow to demonstrate how the
fonts looks there:

\setkomafont{section}{\usefont{T1}{fvs}{b}{n}\Large}


>> I would advise you to consult the "LaTeX2e font selection" document,
>> by the LaTeX3 Project Team. In your terminal,
>> 
>>      texdoc fntguide
> 
> That was something I didn't know about, and to which I had previously
> seen no reference.  Could indeed be useful. 

No, fntguide is mostly for package authors. 

 
> My fundamental desideratum is for clearer explanation.  Better
> documentation, readily accessible information, simple recipes that
> don't require one to read 300 pages of material in order to get started.

Yes the old cry for simplicity. Sorry but you are from an
university. What would you tell a student, complaining that the book
about statistic is too long and complicated, I don't want to learn
this, can't you explain it on two pages in simple words for someone
with "Very Little Brain"?


Well the simple recipe is: 

For many free fonts there is a latex package you can use and that is
installed with your tex system. Such a package typically has a short
documentation or readme which tells you if this is a serif or sans
serif font. The font catalogue has normally a sample document and
also links to the ctan page. 

If you want to use some professional special font or some old font
without proper latex support, find someone to create such a package
for you. Fonts are not easy stuff, it requires some skills, and
people like Bob or Michael which build and maintain such packages
didn't learn this in a day.  


-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/