# How to combine Helvetica and Symbol with LuaTeX?

For text and equation in figures I want to use the Helvetica font. Unfortunately the greek symbols from Helvetica are not really suitable. A number of publishers recommend to combine Helvetica with the greek symbols from the Symbol.ttf font.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}

\setmainfont{Helvetica World}
\setmathfont[range=\mathit]{Helvetica World}
% this does not work:
%\setmathfont[use greek letters from]{Symbol}

\begin{document}

Some text and an equation: $\alpha + \beta = QR$.

\end{document}


I played around with \DeclareMathSymbol but that conflicted with unicode-math.

Is there any way to follow this recommendation of combining these two fonts in (Lua-)LaTeX?

• The font used with \setmathfont should have an opentype math table which sets many math related parameters. latin modern math, xits math, cambria math have this table for example. – David Carlisle Mar 3 '16 at 22:15
• @DavidCarlisle: That is definitely the best path but often you have to adapt to the environment you work in (e.g. colleagues, publishers,...). – Alexander Mar 3 '16 at 22:21
• No the unicode-math package requires that, it was not just a possibly best path, it is the only way it can work. It is possible to use helvetica letters in math, but not like that. – David Carlisle Mar 3 '16 at 22:24
• @DavidCarlisle: That is interesting, I assumed that unicode-math would use some defaults if these tables are absent. In any case, in the example given above it does work with Helvetica. The only bit missing is to use greek letters from a different font. – Alexander Mar 4 '16 at 0:34

If you use the \setmathfont command you should make sure that you also load a real math font as basis. If only text fonts are used in \setmathfont you can loose symbols.

The symbol font is not unicode encoded, it has the greek characters at the place of a, b, c etc. So you will need some \mathgreek command and will have to redefine \alpha etc. You will loose the ability to get a bold alpha with \symbf{\alpha}.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}

\setmainfont{Arial}

\setmathfont{Cambria Math} % a real math font

\setmathfont[range=it/{latin,Latin}]{Arial}

\setmathfontface\mathgreek{Symbol}

\begin{document}

{\fontspec{Symbol} abc}

$\int\sum \mathgreek{abc} \mathit{abc} \alpha\beta\gamma$.

\renewcommand\alpha{\mathord{\mathgreek{a}}}
$\alpha$

\end{document}


• Thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for. I was not aware of the mathgreek command before. – Alexander Mar 9 '16 at 16:57
• You couldn't. I invented and defined it with the \setmathfontface command. (You can use another name if you want). – Ulrike Fischer Mar 9 '16 at 17:03