I'm using almost default settings, with Computer Modern as the main font; I have to stick to it as much as possible, and keep the preamble as short and simple as possible.
Up to now, I've been using (slanted) sans serif greek letters in math mode, in cmbright
font-family, exactly as suggested in this answer (I copied my settings from it, then I somehow sorted out the uppercase problem).
Everything works great, I'm very happy with the results, but now I need to add also (slanted) bold sans serif greek letters (at least some of them).
I've been able to do this with cmss
, following this other answer, but I'm not happy with the results; a MWE comparing the results:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[LGR,T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,etoolbox}
\DeclareSymbolFont{sfletters}{OML}{cmbrm}{m}{it}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\salpha}{\mathord}{sfletters}{"0B}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\sbeta}{\mathord}{sfletters}{"0C}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\sLambda}{\mathord}{sfletters}{'3}
\newcommand{\declaresfgreek}[2]{%
\protected\csdef{sf#1}{\mathord{\text{\sfgreekfont#2}}}%
}
\newcommand{\sfgreekfont}{\usefont{LGR}{cmss}{m}{it}}% change the family
\declaresfgreek{alpha}{a}
\declaresfgreek{beta}{b}
\declaresfgreek{Lambda}{L}
\newcommand{\declarebsfgreek}[2]{%
\protected\csdef{bsf#1}{\mathord{\text{\bsfgreekfont#2}}}%
}
\newcommand{\bsfgreekfont}{\usefont{LGR}{cmss}{bx}{it}}% change the family
\declarebsfgreek{alpha}{a}
\declarebsfgreek{beta}{b}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation*}
\salpha\ne\alpha\ne\sfalpha\ne\bsfalpha
\end{equation*}
\begin{equation*}
{\sLambda^\salpha}_\sbeta\ne{\varLambda^\alpha}_\beta%
\ne{{\sfLambda}^{\sfalpha}}_{\sfbeta}
\end{equation*}
\end{document}
One should get:
In my opinion:
- the greek fonts of
cmss
andcmbright
are too different from one another; they can't be used together; I tried to show this fact in the first equation (cmbright ≠ cm ≠ cmss ≠ bold cmss); cmss
doesn't cope well with superscripts and subscripts (because it's too thick!), whilecmbright
is great; actually, I find thatcmbright
gives an optimal sans-serif "translation" of the CM serif expression, whilecmss
is very far from it (cmbright ≠ cm ≠ cmss).
For some reason, I cannot simply "change the family" (as it is suggested in the comment to the code above; that bit has been copied from the second link) in \sfgreekfont
and \bsfgreekfont
to cmbright
; my guess is that cmbright
has not bold greek letters, but I'm no expert here, quite the opposite; by the way, in the cmbright
package documentation they explain how to get bold greek, but I've not been able to sort things out for my specific needs.
So is there is any way to add a bold sans serif greek alphabeth in cmbright
(or some other font family producing very similar results: not too heavy font-weight, fit for indexing, not messing too much with CM) to be used along with the default math settings?