I wanted to amplify the effect of specifying the font size. So I tried:
{\tiny\tiny Super tiny text!}
But that doesn't seem to work. I needed suggestions to achieve the same goal.
A quick-and-dirty possibility for converting almost anything to a different size is to use graphicx
's \resizebox
or \scalebox
. In your instance, if line-breaking is not a consideration, you can use
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
%...
Normal {\tiny tiny} \scalebox{.2}{supertiny}
The above view is zoomed to 400%. You can modify the scaling factor .2
to whatever you're interested in.
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1Scaling is perhaps the best way for me. I am trying to add labels to various schematics using Tikz. Scaling will give me much smoother control on the size of the labels (esp. when the base figures of the schematics come in all shapes and sizes). – Shashank Sawant May 28 '12 at 22:52
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2Scaling will get you small fonts, but possibly not the correct shapes. For fonts that have design sizes, 6pt scaled down to 4pt might look different (and be less legible) than a true 4pt. Computer Modern is one of these. Use
\fontsize{}{}
instead. – MPi May 29 '12 at 6:30 -
@Werner Why do you refer to your solution as a dirty trick? It is one of the most useful commands that I use. I was wondering if it increases the compile time or something equivalent - stuff that computer scientists are usually obsessed about. – Shashank Sawant Sep 24 '12 at 2:32
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1@ShashankSawant: It's dirty because you're not using the properties (kerning/spacing) of the font anymore, as mentioned by MPi. Note the different spacing as you progress from
\normalsize
to\small
to\footnotesize
to\tiny
of the same word. Also, you loose the capability of hyphenation since you box the contents. If this is of no concern, then it's not a dirty trick! :) – Werner Sep 24 '12 at 4:47
The size changing commands don't have a cumulative effect, so you simply get \tiny
. Recall that the size chosen would be 5pt if the main size for the document is 10pt. Under 5pt characters are barely legible.
Here's an example:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\begin{document}
Normal {\tiny Tiny} {\fontsize{2.5}{4}\selectfont Supertiny}
\end{document}
Notice that the image here is magnified. Without lmodern
or a package that chooses a scalable font you wouldn't get "supertiny", unless you load the fix-cm
package.
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1
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1
If you do not need large font sizes, too, the easiest way is to use a document class that supports an arbitrary size for the main font, such as scrartcl
, the article class from the KOMA-Script bundle:
\documentclass[fontsize=6pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\begin{document}
\rule{2pt}{12pt}12pt\rule{2pt}{12pt} Normal 6pt {\tiny Tiny 3pt}
\end{document}
The height of the bars represents 12pt.
The memoir
class has the declaration \miniscule
that will give you 1 point less than \tiny
. You'll find the details in §3.4 of the class' manual (texdoc memman
).
You can also use the TeX
command \fontsize{4pt}{6pt}\selectfont
which will select a fontsize of 4pt with 6pt of leading, or whatever you wish.
(I think this doesn't work with virtual fonts, unless your system already has the sizes for those fonts installed.)
\documentclass[12pt]{memoir}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
Normal text.\\
{\tiny Tiny text.}\\
{\miniscule Miniscule text.}\\
{\fontsize{4}{6}\selectfont Size 4pt with leading 6pt.}
\end{document}
Un petit jeux
fontspec
(via truetype/opentype) allows a Scale=
option when defining a font. (Scaling the font is different to scaling a box with the font inside it.)
So starting with a standard class article
, scaling the font to 50%, and then using \tiny
gives me this:
egreg is right: it is hardly legible.
MWE
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Scale=0.5]{Noto Serif}
\begin{document}
\tiny abc
\end{document}
But, on magnification (x2562.89%), the letter shapes are perfectly formed:
Which suggests the idea of this, scaling even further:
which on closer inspection, zooming in, reveals itself to be:
And even more (x6400%):
How far can we go? Down to Tex sp magnitudes, perhaps?
MWE
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\setmainfont{Noto Serif}
\newfontface\ftsmall[Scale=0.25,Colour=red]{Noto Serif}
\begin{document}
b\kern-5.5pt{\ftsmall{\tiny abc}}
\end{document}
But size, position and colour does not affect presence or truly hide the text, so copy-pasting it produces babc
as expected.
In the philatelic world, magnifying-glass text on stamps is not uncommon.
Potential applications for this scaling could be for "signing" texts (and CVs?); fractal texts along paths in TikZ; stamp-production; compressing a whole lecture's worth of notes into one . on a beamer slide for later perusal by students; bottle label design; and so on.
This quantum typography also demonstrates that mathematics (the curve descriptions of the glyphs) is true at all sizes and locations.
Edited to add:
Essentially infinite.
With three layers now, at x19462% magnification:
MWE
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\setmainfont{Noto Serif}
\newfontface\ftsmall[Scale=0.25,Colour=red]{Noto Serif}
\newfontface\ftvsmall[Scale=0.02,Colour=yellow]{Noto Serif}
\begin{document}
b\kern-5.5pt{\ftsmall{\tiny abc}}\kern-1.33pt{\ftvsmall{\tiny abc}}
\end{document}
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What a great idea to mark documents indeed! I was wondering if you could actually "hide" some text in the dot of the "i"? – JeT Mar 11 '20 at 22:02
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@Julien-ElieTaieb Yes, a large amount of text could go there, like lecture notes (almost wrote 'lecture motes' :) ). It will still be able to be copied, though. Practical tryouts indicate that, for finding the spot to zoom in to, a marker will be useful (Infodot: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/501281/…). And, of course, the process is recursive: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/501281/… – Cicada Mar 15 '20 at 4:41
\tiny
will use a 6pt font; at main size 10pt, it would be 5pt. Under this characters are barely legible. – egreg May 28 '12 at 21:32