Defining subfamilies for a font

Question

I wish to import from files a font family, which comes in extra light, light, regular, medium, bold and black. Instead of defining several different font names and choosing them as I need, it would be great if I could somehow define a single family and then attribute when I used different weights. Is this possible? I am using xelatex with fontspec. Is there an alternative to fontspec that offers an easy solution?

Answer 1

The manual of fontspec mentions the key FontFace. So let's assume your font are

BestFont-ExtraLight.otf
BestFont-ExtraLightItalic.otf
BestFont-Light.otf
BestFont-LightItalic.otf
BestFont-Regular.otf
BestFont-Italic.otf
BestFont-Medium.otf
BestFont-MediumItalic.otf
BestFont-Bold.otf
BestFont-BoldItalic.otf
BestFont-Black.otf
BestFont-BlackItalic.otf

Then you should be able to provide the font definition as

\setmainfont{BestFont}[
  Extension=.otf,
  UprightFont=*-Regular,
  ItalicFont=*-Italic,
  BoldFont=*-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont=*-BoldItalic,
  FontFace={xl}{n}{*-ExtraLight},
  FontFace={xl}{it}{*-ExtraLightItalic},
  FontFace={l}{n}{*-Light},
  FontFace={l}{it}{*-LightItalic},
  FontFace={mb}{n}{*-Medium},
  FontFace={mb}{it}{*-MediumItalic},
  FontFace={k}{n}{*-Black},
  FontFace={k}{it}{*-BlackItalic},
]

A real world example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\setmainfont{Raleway}[
  Extension=.otf,
  UprightFont=*-Regular,
  ItalicFont=*-Regular-Italic,
  BoldFont=*-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont=*-Bold-Italic,
  FontFace={xl}{n}{*-ExtraLight},
  FontFace={xl}{it}{*-ExtraLight-Italic},
  FontFace={l}{n}{*-Light},
  FontFace={l}{it}{*-Light-Italic},
  FontFace={mb}{n}{*-Medium},
  FontFace={mb}{it}{*-Medium-Italic},
  FontFace={k}{n}{*-Black},
  FontFace={k}{it}{*-Black-Italic},
]

\begin{document}

\newcommand{\test}[2]{%
  #1: {\fontseries{#2}\selectfont This is upright. \itshape This is italic}\par
}

\test{ExtraLight}{xl}
\test{Light}{l}
\test{Regular}{m}
\test{Medium}{mb}
\test{Bold}{bx}
\test{Black}{k}

\end{document}

Now you can also define font switching commands by yourself:

\DeclareRobustCommand\xlseries{\fontseries{xl}\selectfont}
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textxl}{\xlseries}
\DeclareRobustCommand\lseries{\fontseries{l}\selectfont}
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textl}{\lseries}
\DeclareRobustCommand\mbseries{\fontseries{mb}\selectfont}
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textmb}{\mbseries}
\DeclareRobustCommand\kseries{\fontseries{k}\selectfont}
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textk}{\kseries}