31

Time and again I have been wanting to use a krul/krulletje in my documents. For instance in proofs consisting of multiple parts, as an alternative \qedsymbol, etc. But never could I find one.

How can I get it?

EDIT: N.B. The krul can come in different forms. Compare for instance the tails of
krul 1 and krul 2.

I personally consider the first one sloppy and the second one desireable. But this is of course a very unofficial and hanwaving definition of what the krul should actually look like. I bet there will also be people who prefer the first type.

A short example of the krul in use can be seen here.

|improve this question
  • If anyone knows a different/better way to draw a krul than in my own answer, please don't hesitate to post it as an answer. – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 8:40
  • 8
    Interesting. This posting suggests that it doesn't really exist in Unicode and supports in fonts is lacking generally not just in tex graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/58320/… – David Carlisle Jun 6 '16 at 8:47
  • 2
    you could ask the UTC to add it.... unicode.org/pending/proposals.html – David Carlisle Jun 6 '16 at 10:04
  • 1
    I can't think of any books right now, but there are probaly some Dutch schoolbooks where the wrong use of something and the correct use of something are compared. The wrong example would then be marked by a (red) cross and the right one by a (green) krul. An example of this use can be seen here. Should there not be any books containing the symbol, I'm willing to bet that any random exercise book, found at a random Dutch elementary school, will contain krullen (PL) made by teacher. I don't know if that counts though. – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 11:18
  • 2
    I didn't even know it is a Dutch-only symbol. I'm so used to it, it never occurred to me that it doesn't exist outside the Netherlands (and Belgium?) . – Xenan Jun 7 '16 at 9:48
23

Thought I'd have a go ...

Using Drawing on an image with TikZ, I took your "desirable" krul symbol and drew on it until I had something that looked fairly similar. I used the hobby package to define the béziers rather than fiddling with control points (to avoid recomputing the path each time the symbol is used, I used a nifty feature of the hobby package that allows for reuse of a hobbily defined path; a bit of box magic puts the definition at the start of the document without - I hope - taking up any space).

The key feature of this implementation is the use of the calligraphy package to style the lines. This, in my opinion, makes it look more like a letter drawn with a pen than a squiggle.

For added bonus, I made it scale according to the fontsize.

\documentclass{article}
%\url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/313281/86}
% Uses:
%\url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/54771/86} (hobby package)
%\url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/16899/86} (calligraphy)
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calligraphy,hobby}

\AtBeginDocument{%
\setbox0=\vbox{\tikz \path[use Hobby shortcut,save Hobby path={krul}] (-.2,0.25) ..  (0,.45) .. (.2,.65) ..  (0.3,0.76) .. (0.4,.97) .. (.1,.8) .. (.05,.65) .. (.3,.5) .. (.3,.4) .. (.15,.1) .. (.15,.05) .. (.3,.05) .. (1,.7);}%
}

\newcommand{\krul}{%
  \tikz[scale=1em/1cm] \calligraphy[copperplate,restore and use Hobby path={krul}{}];%
}
\begin{document}

This statement is true \krul

{\Large This statement is true \krul }

{\Huge This statement is true \krul }

\end{document}

a tikzified krul

|improve this answer
  • 3
    I really like that you managed to make it look handwritten. If I read your answer correctly, this is the calligraphy's doing, right? I'm not entirely familiar with all the commands you're using, so I'll need to let it sink in. – gebruiker Jun 7 '16 at 19:28
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    @gebruiker Yes, you're right: it is the calligraphy package (or rather, sub-package) that makes for the tapering effect. – Loop Space Jun 7 '16 at 19:36
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    The way you managed to simulate handwriting is awesome! Well done! – logo_writer Jun 7 '16 at 22:10
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    Of the current answers to this question, this is the only one that is actually immediately recognizable as a krul. – RemcoGerlich Jun 9 '16 at 6:46
  • When I compile this code, I get a lot of errors.It starts with ! Undefined control sequence. <argument> \g__prg_map_int. The krul still appears correct. – Jesse op den Brouw Apr 29 at 18:03
29

The marvosym package has a symbol called \Denarius. The package documentation says, "The \Denarius symbol is also known as the correction sign “Deleatur”." The deleatur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dele) is a proofreading symbol that would seem to be the counterpart to "stet".

In fact, the topic of the correspondence of deleatur and krul was discussed at our sister website https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/58320/what-is-the-name-or-unicode-for-this-symbol-similar-to-%E2%82%B0-dutch-called-krul, as some of the answers allude to.

Below I show it as given, and then two clipped versions, as some might not like the extra curl.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{marvosym,trimclip,graphicx}
\def\krulA{\Denarius}
\def\krulB{\kern-1.5pt\rotatebox[origin=center]{22}{%
  \clipbox{5.5pt 0pt 0pt 0pt}{\rotatebox[origin=center]{-22}{\Denarius}}}\kern-2.5pt}
\def\krulC{\clipbox{4.5pt 0pt 0pt 0pt}{\rotatebox[origin=center]{-10}{\Denarius}}}
\begin{document}
\krulA, \krulB, or this \krulC.
\end{document}

enter image description here

The German wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleatur, says that the symbol has a unicode of U+20B0, though I have not yet found a font that contains it. However, the German rendition is not quite the same as shown above.

|improve this answer
  • 1
    I am very content with the simplicity of this answer. However I must say that some people will regard a krul without the upgoing tail at the end as unfinished or sloppy. But as implied by the picture in the SE-link you provided, this is not a hard definition in the eyes of everyone. I am editing the OP right now to point this out. Nevertheless, +1. – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 11:25
  • @gebruiker Thanks. I don't have familiarity with the symbol to know the aesthetic markers that define it. I did note a hint of an upturning at the end of the stroke, but it was not fully pronounced as in some renditions, to be sure. – Steven B. Segletes Jun 6 '16 at 11:27
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    According to the article linked in the Wikipedia article, the symbol is included as a German penny sign in several Microsoft fonts. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfennig#Pfennigzeichen – toni Jun 6 '16 at 12:08
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    @offbyoni The obsolete German penny sign is different, as it is derived from the lower case form of the Kurrent “d”, whereas the deleatur sign is derived from the upper case “D”. Furthermore, the rendering of the Pfennig sign U+20B0 (₰) is more usually as a “Pf” ligature; the obsolete variant is only used in a few fonts. – Konrad Rudolph Jun 7 '16 at 8:51
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    for reference, Open Sans has U+20B0 ₰, as does Lucinda Sans Unicode (the font used on TeX.SE, for me since I don't have Luncinda Grande) – Lyndon White Jun 7 '16 at 14:22
29

If you are using pdfTeX then you can use \pdfliteral which draws the desired character directly. For example:

\def\krul{\leavevmode\hbox{\lower2.5pt\vbox to10pt{}\kern1.8pt
   \pdfliteral{q   
   1 j .7 0 0 .7 0 0 cm
   -2 1 m 
   3 2 4 5 4 7  c
   4 9 3 10 2 10 c
   1 10 0 9 0 7  c
   0 3 5 2 5 0 c
   5 -2 2 -3 1 -3 c
   S Q}\kern4.5pt}}

aha \krul.

\bye

yields

Sample image of the krul sign

|improve this answer
  • 1
    Copy-pasting the code I can see that it draws a krul, but I am not really familiar with the \pdfliteral-command. Could you perhaps point me in a direction where the use of this command is explained? – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 11:50
  • @gebruiker texdoc pdftex I think. – cfr Jun 6 '16 at 12:37
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    @gebruiker \pdfliteral sends the direct PDF code to the PDF output. You need to know the basic PDF commands to understand it (or you can export image from inkscape as eps and do copy-paste). Your code using Tikz do the same in background, i.e. it generates \pdfliteral. There is a command c with six numbers preceding. This creates Beczier curve. For example the first Bezier curve from your example is 2.916 1.685 m 3.1 1.594 6.104 3.99 5.061 4.437 c. I didn't use no geogebra, no inkscape, I only see the character picture and write the numbers. :) – wipet Jun 6 '16 at 15:18
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    Amazing as always, Petr! :) – Paulo Cereda Jun 7 '16 at 16:29
18

I created the symbol using tikz. I chose to scale the krul to about a letter size, but one can of course change this.

Here's the code:

     \newcommand{\krul}{
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.095]
\clip(2.8,0.95) rectangle (6.3,4.9);
\draw[very thick,color= black, ] 
(2.916,1.685) ..controls %0
(3.100,1.594) and %1
(6.104,3.990) .. %2
(5.061,4.437) ..controls %3 
(4.166,4.827) and %4
(3.077,3.853) .. %5
(3.535,3.119) ..controls %6
(3.857,2.580) and %7
(4.430,2.844) .. %8
(4.889,2.522) ..controls %9
(5.267,2.282) and %10
(4.086,0.929) .. %11
(5.129,1.238) ..controls %12
(6.150,1.548) .. %13
(6.150,1.548); %13
\end{tikzpicture}}

I got the code via Bézier curves in Geogebra. Once I got the krul, I exported the file as tikz-code.

In my humble opinion, it looks quite nice:

Example of krul use

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  • 4
    (2.916755304486848,1.6858806827760646) ? What is wrong in, say, (2.917,1.686)? – Przemysław Scherwentke Jun 6 '16 at 8:53
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    @Przemys Probably nothing, but as I said, I used the code that Geogebra exported. So everything was just copy-pasted. Removing the extra decimals thus would have been extra work for me. I hope you can forgive my lazyness :) – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 9:27
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    I've truncated to 3dp (if I could have rounded I'd have gone for 2dp, but truncation was much easier). Find: ([0-9]\.[0-9]{3})[0-9]*([,\)]); replace :$1$2 in jEdit. If you don't like it, roll it back, I won't be offended. – Chris H Jun 6 '16 at 12:25
  • @ChrisH I don't mind. Nobody will be able to see the difference. I don't understand what you mean to say in the second sentence of your comment. – gebruiker Jun 6 '16 at 12:40
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    The second sentence was just a recipe for regex-based find/replace – Chris H Jun 6 '16 at 12:56
4

Have a look at http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html, a VERY useful site!

enter image description here

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3

Here are some fonts which you could use with help of Lua- or XeLaTeX:

% arara: lualatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\begin{document}
\setmainfont{Arial}
\symbol{"20B0}
\setmainfont{Cambria}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Consolas}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Courier New}
\symbol{"20B0}
\setmainfont{Dejavu Sans}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Symbola}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Quivira}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Code2000}
\symbol{"20B0}  
\setmainfont{Free Serif}
\symbol{"20B0}
\end{document}

enter image description here

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0

I think you can go with an inverted ampersand, I made it lowered a bit, too:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{graphicx,amsmath}

\DeclareRobustCommand*\krul{\text{\scalebox{-1}[1]{\raisebox{-0.7\dp\strutbox}{\&}}}}

\begin{document}

\section*{Hello, world \krul}

Hello, world \krul

\end{document}
|improve this answer
  • 6
    I appreciate the effort, but I would not consider this a krul. I realize that it is quite aesthetically defined, so people who aren't familiar with the symbol, might consider other symbols to be similar sooner then the people who are. – gebruiker Jun 7 '16 at 13:53
  • If you insist on downvoting my post, please let me know what's wrong with it. Thanks. – yo' Jun 22 '16 at 20:16

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