Mathpazo Strangeness

Question

This has me flummoxxed. Here's an MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\begin{document}

$\omega$

$\mathbf{\omega}$

\end{document}

What should print is the mathpazo omega, and then the bold omega on the next line. Instead I see a ! instead of a bold lowercase omega. I've tried using \mathbf{} on all of the other greek letters and none of their bold variants work, instead I get fl and ff ligatures and other symbols even though I know that there is a bold greek lowercase font in mathpazo.

What is going wrong? I am running MacTeX 2015 for what it is worth.

Answer 1

Assuming that you call \vec with the argument consisting of a single symbol, either a Latin or a Greek letter, the following should do.

Note that this has nothing to do with mathpazo: \mathbf just works for Latin letters (and possibly for uppercase Greek, but not for all math fonts).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage{bm}

\renewcommand{\vec}[1]{%
  \if#1\relax\bm{#1}\else\mathbf{#1}\fi
}

\begin{document}

$\omega$

$\vec{x}+\vec{\omega}-\vec{\Gamma}$

\end{document}

Don't use \ensuremath. If you have an isolated vector in text, it is math nonetheless, so type it as $\vec{x}$: it's clearer and not more difficult to input.