10

As the subject heading suggests, I'm looking for a calligraphic or (if need be) handwriting font for a small part of my document that renders letters with macrons (a kind of diacritic), like this:

Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?

I'd love one that works using a pdfLaTeX compiler on Overleaf without my needing to tie myself in knots to get it done, but I realize that may be asking too much.

I've tried Calligra and Augie, and either the macrons didn't show up (Calligra) or the letters with macrons showed up as black boxes (Augie). Then a friend significantly more knowledgeable than I said she didn't know of anybody, so I figured the next step was to turn to the experts.

Is there a way out of this pickle?

1
  • 1
    If your publisher makes you use PDFLaTeX, this isn’t an option. But, Overleaf supports LuaLaTeX, and you can save and use any free OpenTyoe or TrueType font in your project folder.
    – Davislor
    Commented Aug 1, 2020 at 1:33

2 Answers 2

16

Of the type 1 fonts listed in the font catalogue, miama appears to work:

\documentclass{article}    
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{miama}    
\begin{document}
\fmmfamily
Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?

Qu\=o \=usque tandem, Catilina, ab\=ut\=ere patienti\=a nostr\=a?
\end{document}

enter image description here

The TeX Gyre version of Zapf Chancery also works:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{tgchorus}
\begin{document}
Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?

Qu\=o \=usque tandem, Catilina, ab\=ut\=ere patienti\=a nostr\=a?
\end{document}

output of tgchorus example

4
  • 1
    AMAZING! Thank you so much! Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 15:09
  • 2
    @JoelDerfner I don't like the m but otherwise it is indeed a nice font.
    – campa
    Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 15:10
  • @Thérèse That's another answer, isn't it? ;-) I've made the answer community wiki so that you can add it if you want.
    – campa
    Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 17:18
  • 2
    I agree about the m in Miama. The font would be improved if this m became a contextual alternate, with a simpler m as the default.
    – Thérèse
    Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 18:10
7

If you're free to use either XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of chancery-type and handwriting-type fonts out there that are set up to handle diacritics.

The following example shows just two such possibilities: Apple Chancery and Zapfino. (Times New Roman is shown mostly for contrast.)

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Times New Roman} % set a suitable default text font
\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchUppercase}
\newfontfamily{\AC}{Apple Chancery}
\newfontfamily{\zapfino}{Zapfino}
\begin{document}
\obeylines % just for this document
Times New Roman
Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?
\bigskip Apple Chancery
{\AC Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?}
\bigskip ...
\bigskip Zapfino
{\zapfino Quō ūsque tandem, Catilina, abūtēre patientiā nostrā?}
\end{document}

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .