Greek handwriting font with math and (optional) TikZ support

Question

I have been searching for several days for a handwriting font in LaTeX which is capable of:

• supporting greek language - either babel+inputenc or babel+utf8 or any possible combination;
• supporting math content;
• optionally, supporting Tikz plots etc.

However, I have not managed to find something - e.g. Google's hand.sty is not compatible with greek fonts (or I haven't found the way to make it work).

So, are there any suggestions?

P.S.: I have no problem to switch from (pdf)LaTeX to some other engine (e.g. LuaTex etc) in order to achieve this.

Answer 1

I don’t know of any handwritten font specifically designed for math, or legacy LaTeX encodings. However, the unicode-math project lets you mix and match any OpenType and TrueType fonts.

Here, I’ve kitbashed the letters from VAG Handwritten and filled in numbers and some math symbols from Tillana. Any symbols not in these fall back to GFS Neohellenic Math.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[math-style=upright]{unicode-math}

\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase}
% Tillana is a free font by the Indian Type Foundry, available at:
% https://github.com/itfoundry/tillana/
% VAG Handwritten is a free font by VAG Design, available at:
% https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/VAG-HandWritten
\setmainfont{VAG-HandWritten.otf}
\setmathfont{GFS Neohellenic Math}
\setmathfont[range={"03C0, "2013-"2014, "2018-"201A, "201C-"201E, "2021-"2022,
                    "2026, "2030, "2039-"203A, "2044, "20AC, "20BA, "20BD,
                    "2113, "2122, "2126, "212E, "2202, "2206, "220F, "2211,
                    "2212, "2215, "221A, "221E, "222B, "2246, "2260, "2264,
                    "2265, "25CA}
            ]{Tillana-Regular.ttf}
\setmathfont[range=bfup/{Latin,latin,num}
            ]{Tillana-Semibold.ttf}
\setmathfont[range={"00-"FF,
                    up/{Latin,latin,Greek,greek},
                    \increment}
            ]{VAG-HandWritten.otf}
\setmathfont[range=up/num
            ]{Tillana-Regular.ttf}

\begin{document}

\[ \lim_{t \to \infty} \frac{\partial}{\partial t}
   \int_0^{2 \muppi} \frac{t^2}{2} \mathop{\symup{d}t} \leq
   \sum_{i=1}^N  \frac{\muppi i}{\sqrt 2} \approx \increment \symbfup{v}t \]

\[ \frac{\sin \theta}{\Theta} =
   \frac{\sin \varphi}{\Phi} = 
   \frac{\sin \gamma}{\Gamma} \]

\end{document}

The widely-available handwritten font with the biggest repertoire of symbols is—you might want to sit down for this, don’t get mad at me, I’m just the messenger—Comic Sans. And some physicists do use it for their presentation slides. You might also have a look at Pecita. But you can sub in any handwritten Greek font of your choice with a command like

\setmathfont[range=up/{Latin,latin,Greek,greek,num}]{Some Font}