Handwritten R-like-kay

Question

I need a handwritten "k" with a circle, the one which looks a bit like R.

I found few fancy fonts with such R-like-kay, say this one, but non of them can stay next to "\ell" in math formulas.

Maybe I have to make one my-self with METAFONT, but it seems to be stupid to learn it just for one letter, and I am sure this way I will produce something ugly.

I hope someone can help.

Answer 1

I've been thinking about this...

The problem is that math "k" and math "kappa" are pretty much the same, except kappa lacks the upper part. And this is confusing.

You mention a "differnet font" on your question, but the problem as you found, is that "text fonts" don't mix with "math fonts".

So an alternative would be use a different math font.

Here we use the "Zapf Chancery" math font to get a different "k" (left side). But it would look ugly next to \ell, so following Emre suggestion, we can redefine ell to become chancery's "l"

\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathpzc}{OT1}{pzc}{m}{it}
\renewcommand{\ell}{\mathpzc{l}}
\newcommand{\kell}{\mathpzc{k}}
would create the k, l on the left side of the image.

In particular image 1 was done with

\begin{equation}
    2\mathpzc{kl}\ell = 2k\kappa l
\end{equation}

but defining/redefining kell/ell would make this easier to type. After all, the objective is to get a "math k" that looks different from kappa and this accomplishes.

If don't mind changing all math fonts, you can use \usepackage[math,condensed]{anttor} and get

for

\begin{equation}
    2k \kappa \neq 2 l\ell
\end{equation}

Unfortunately I don't know what would the proper way to create a "letter command" (like \kell or \fancyk) to get only the k using antykwa font as above.

EDIT: I've found \usepackage{fouriernc} also gives the R-like k, but with a more modern look