Which LaTeX fonts have old style numbers?

Question

I want to set a text and I know that I want old style numbers. Does anyone know of some source or maybe can themselves list fonts with old style numbers?

Answer 1

Here's a list of common (CTAN available) roman(*) type1 fonts, mostly assuming T1 font encoding ...

ADF Baskervald - no
ADF Berenis - native, use package option osf
ADF Electrum - native, use package option osf
ADF Romande - no
ADF Venturis - native, use package option osf
ADF Venturis 2 - no
ADF Venturis Old - no
Adobe Minion Pro - native, use package option textosf or similar
AE - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Antykwa Poltawskiego - via small caps
Antykwa Torunska - via small caps
Augie - no
Auriocus Kalligraphicus (etc.) - ONLY osf, i.e., no lining figures
Bera Serif - no
Bitstream Charter - no
Computer Modern - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
CM Bright - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
CM Dunhill - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
CM Fibonacci - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Concrete - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Day Roman & Day Roman S - ONLY osf, i.e., no lining figures
DejaVu - no
Droid - no
European Modern - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
GFS Artemisia - via small caps
GFS Bodoni - via small caps
GFS Didot - via small caps
GFS Neohellenic - via small caps
Gyre Bonum - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Gyre Pagella - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Gyre Schola - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Gyre Termes - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Iwona - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
JAM Times - no
Kurier - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Kerkis  - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Kepler Project fonts - native, use package option oldstylenums
Latin Modern - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Libertine Legacy (type1) - native, use package option osf
B&H Lucida Bright - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
New Century Schoolbook - no
Palatino - without mathpazo: \renewcommand*\rmdefault{pplj}
Paratype PT Serif - no
PXFonts - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Times Roman - faked smallcaps & oldstyle (TS1) figures via txfonts package
TXFonts - per comment attached to Times Roman
URW Garamond - no
Uncial - no
URW Antiqua - no
URW Bookman - no
URW Nimbus - try \oldstylenums, otherwise access directly via TS1 encoding
Adobe Utopia - via small caps
Zapf Chancery - no

(*) i.e., for fonts you might set up in \rmdefault. Just to round things out, I've thrown in some examples -- augie, iwona, uncial, etc -- that on first blush don't fit this mould.

Answer 2

You can scour this page for fonts Font catalogue which has many fonts displayed. If the oldstyle feature is included in the font spec, it would be shown.

I do not know of the update regularity of this webpage however it has many fonts! And many of these hasn't changed in a good time.

EDIT: Thanks @doncherry, I didn't think of google page search, of course that is way better! Here is the link for oldstyle searches on the previous mentioned site.

Other pages can be found under Font samplers in this site.

As a side note, I really enjoy the look of kpfonts which has oldstyle numbers among other things.

Answer 3

I assume, since you're asking about old style numerals, that you care about typography. I can talk about the fonts that I have experience with. What follows is my biased report. All of the following are free:

• Palatino is popular. Looks great, supports math, easy install. See this example usage of the font.
• Minion is trendy. Looks great, supports math, difficult to install for non-experts like me (I almost cried). See this example usage of the font.
• lmodern is a version of Computer Modern that has old style numerals. They are accessible either through \oldstylenums{<123>} or through loading the cfr-lm package, which enables them globally. I'm not a big fan of how Computer Modern looks, and I've never actually seen old style numerals in a TeX'd document that uses Computer Modern. But it supports math and is easy to install.
• Kp-fonts has great support for all your typographic needs, and serves as body text well. (EDIT: Comes with a sans serif companion.) Unfortunately I don't like how some of the letters look italicized. Supports math, easy install. See the documentation here.
• Libertine is nice. (EDIT: Comes with a sans serif companion.) Looks great, easy install, but no math support. Documentation here.

Do look into the other ones in the link provided by doncherry in a comment to zeroth's answer.

EDIT Just tried the following fonts from doncherry's link. They each have distinctive features, so I wouldn't use them as the body font of anything without a good reason, I guess.

• Kurier is sans serif. Has math, easy install.
• Iwona is sans serif. No math, easy install.
• GFS Didot has Greek. The Latin letters are based off of Palatino, which is somewhat distracting for me since I keep noticing the differences. Has math, easy install.
• Venturis ADF is seriffed but also comes with a sans companion. No math, easy install.

All of the nine fonts in this list, by the way, have true small caps, which is nice.