5

I have noticed that with Minion Pro font v and \nu are indistinguishable.

Does anyone know a decent workaround to this?

Somewhere in the web it was suggested to use \upsilon as a substitute for v. It's a bit irritating, however: You lose \upsilon and w and v will look too different.

|improve this question
  • Welcome to TeX.sx! – Martin Scharrer♦ Jun 30 '11 at 17:11
  • 5
    J. This is really a font issue: that is the design of the font. The work-around is to pick a different font! – Joseph Wright♦ Jun 30 '11 at 19:43
  • @Joseph Wright: You are right. However, I wouldn't like to let go of Minion completely. I'm looking for (1) a way to replace v and w (or \nu) with something else and (2) a good choice of "something else". Here the point (2) is more important for me. (Point (1) is probably relatively easy.) – J. J. Jul 1 '11 at 3:55
  • 2
    J. My point is that this is really not a TeX question, it's about typography. Quite apart from that, fonts are designed 'as a whole'. If the font you choose has poor glyphs for your use case, this suggests it's the wrong font for the job in hand. – Joseph Wright♦ Jul 1 '11 at 5:17
  • 1
    @Joseph Wright: Yes, this is not a TeX question. I was however under impression that this might still be an acceptable question for this site. (Judging from previous questions like this one: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9533/… ) Sorry if I was wrong! – J. J. Jul 1 '11 at 6:08
5

This seems to have been solved by Johannes Küster in his MnMath. See for example this presentation by him on page 11, where he shows a redesigned math italic "v" and "w".

However MnMath is not cheap (around 700€ for the complete set) compared to free for MnSymbol.

|improve this answer
  • Interesting. I wonder how hard would it be to add (and design) alternative v and w for MnSymbol. (Using them could be optional for the user.) – J. J. Jul 1 '11 at 17:17
  • 1
    If you can get those glyphs designed, then adding them as optional math symbols should be relatively easy to do (see for example how the MinionPro package implements the [openg] option to switch to open g for mathmode). – Lev Bishop Jul 1 '11 at 18:14

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.