Good small caps font to use with arev?

Question

I am typesetting a beamer presentation with the arev package (using plain old pdftex). By convention, some of the keywords in my presentation are usually typeset in small caps—which arev does not provide.

Any suggestions for a good font to use for small caps, that would fit in well with arev for the main body? (Bonus points for providing instructions for setting up that font!)

Answer 1

This is more a case of food for thought, rather than a definitive resolution to your problem. As cfr points out, a case of font scaling may be the lesser of evils in comparison to using a combination of two distinct font families.

The point I wanted to raise, if you do opt for font scaling, is that I have found unequal scaling (different horizontal vs. vertical scaling) to provide a more pleasing look that better matches many of the small-cap features.

In my MWE, using computer modern, the top line is titling caps, the second line is true small caps. The third line gives uniformly scaled characters, whereas the fourth line, by comparison, uses unequal horizontal and vertical scaling. In my opinion, line 4 is preferable to line 3. This is just something for your consideration.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
ABC Titling Caps

\textsc{Abc} True Small Caps

A\scalebox{.75}{BC} 75\% Scaled Letters

A\scalebox{.83}[.75]{BC} 75\% vertical, 83\% horizontal scale

\end{document}

In arev, I think the stroke widths are more suitable with the uneven scaling, as well. I also tweaked the scale sizes a small bit.

If one decides to adopt such an approach, it can be turned into a macro \fauxsc{} (using the graphicx package):

\newcommand\fauxsc[1]{\fauxschelper#1\relax\relax}
\def\fauxschelper#1#2\relax{%
  \ifnum`#1>``\ifnum`#1<`\{\scalebox{.87}[.79]{\uppercase{#1}}\else#1\fi\else#1\fi%
  \ifx\relax#2\relax\else\fauxschelper#2\relax\fi}

which is called in the manner of \fauxsc{Abc}