Handwritten R-like-kay

Question

I need a handwritten "k" with a circle, the one which looks a bit like R.

I found few fancy fonts with such R-like-kay, say this one, but non of them can stay next to "\ell" in math formulas.

Maybe I have to make one my-self with METAFONT, but it seems to be stupid to learn it just for one letter, and I am sure this way I will produce something ugly.

I hope someone can help.

Why don't you redefine \ell to use the same typeface as the calligraphic 'k'? — Emre, Apr 14 '11 at 18:26
I need to modify kay so it would look very different from \kappa, but would look nicely together with other Latin letters in the formulas (in particular \ell) — Anton Petrunin, Apr 14 '11 at 21:18
@Emre, I need a new symbol, I do not want to redefine anything... — Anton Petrunin, Apr 14 '11 at 22:30
What he's suggesting is that you use "calligraphic k" (different from kappa), and then change \ell to become "calligraphic l" so k and l would look similar. — drini, Apr 15 '11 at 09:48
Sure, I plan to define something like \kay, but the problem is to find suitable symbol. — Anton Petrunin, Apr 15 '11 at 22:38

drini · Answer 1 · 2011-04-15T10:44:24.290

I've been thinking about this...

The problem is that math "k" and math "kappa" are pretty much the same, except kappa lacks the upper part. And this is confusing.

You mention a "differnet font" on your question, but the problem as you found, is that "text fonts" don't mix with "math fonts".

So an alternative would be use a different math font.

First attempt

Here we use the "Zapf Chancery" math font to get a different "k" (left side). But it would look ugly next to \ell, so following Emre suggestion, we can redefine ell to become chancery's "l"

\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathpzc}{OT1}{pzc}{m}{it}
\renewcommand{\ell}{\mathpzc{l}}
\newcommand{\kell}{\mathpzc{k}}
would create the k, l on the left side of the image.

In particular image 1 was done with

\begin{equation}
    2\mathpzc{kl}\ell = 2k\kappa l
\end{equation}

but defining/redefining kell/ell would make this easier to type. After all, the objective is to get a "math k" that looks different from kappa and this accomplishes.

If don't mind changing all math fonts, you can use \usepackage[math,condensed]{anttor} and get

antykwa

for

\begin{equation}
    2k \kappa \neq 2 l\ell
\end{equation}

Unfortunately I don't know what would the proper way to create a "letter command" (like \kell or \fancyk) to get only the k using antykwa font as above.

EDIT: I've found \usepackage{fouriernc} also gives the R-like k, but with a more modern look

Thank you, I made these experiments --- changing style does not work for me, and the symbols are very different from the standard style. — Anton Petrunin, Apr 16 '11 at 02:57

Handwritten R-like-kay

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