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I am just curious about this handwriting here: Font

Do anyone of you know what font that is (what it is called) and if LaTeX have this font (and how to use it)?

Kind regards!

Basilius Sapientia
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1 Answers1

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Typeface identification

To find what font it is, there are several online services:

You just upload your picture (it would be nice to rotate it first so the text would be horizontal), correct the letters and it might tell you. Or you can check on MyFonts or Dafont for a typeface that it close to the picture.

The TUG Font Catalogue doesn’t have this particular font, so LaTeX is very unlikely to “have” it.

How to use an “external” font?

(By “external”, I mean classical font, not a package like lmodern, kpfonts, etc.)

It is not possible unless you use Xe(La)TeX or Lua(La)TeX. These are new and modern engines that can do many things, especially managing external fonts. Generally, you can use Xe(La)TeX and Lua(La)TeX pretty much the same way you use your usual engine (e. g. pdfLaTeX).

Xe(La)TeX and Lua(La)TeX come with the fontspec package. It gives you access to several commands but the most interresting for you are \fontspec (used to change the font of a portion of text; it works like \bfseries and \sffamily) and \setmainfont (used to specify the main font of the document; by default it’s Latin/Computer Modern).

These two commands takes two parameters:

  • the first is optional and lets you specify the behavior of the font (ligatures for example, which are very important in handrwritten fonts);
  • the second is the name of the font (not the name of the file!)

For example, to use Times New Roman, you write \fontspec{Times New Roman}. To use the common ligatures, you just add the right option: \fontspec[Ligatures={Common}]{Times New Roman}.

Zoxume
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    in fact, it is highly likely that the sample shown is calligraphy, written by hand with a broad-edged pen, and not a font. this can be seen by the join at the upper-right corners of the "internal" "a"s -- they are ever so slightly different from one another. – barbara beeton Feb 04 '15 at 17:25
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    I know (the dip pen is visible) but several calligraphy styles became fonts (for example Chancery) and Basilius Sapientia might find a close font he likes. – Zoxume Feb 04 '15 at 17:33
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    the likelihood of finding a font with such an embellished "H" and "f" is quite doubtful. also the extended cross on the "t". if it had been specified that the "internal" letters were the desired style, and the embellishments weren't expected, then i'd agree, but the implication was that the poster wants "the whole shebang". that's just not going to happen (although zapfino comes reasonably close, but it's a real beast to work with in (la)tex). – barbara beeton Feb 04 '15 at 17:38
  • Well, there are fonts that come with “swash” variants (fontspec can use them), but indeed it would be surprising to find the very same style of the picture. Though, apart from the ornaments it seems to be a very classical English handwritting. – Zoxume Feb 04 '15 at 17:44
  • You could also try http://www.whatfontis.com/ and http://www.identifont.com/ – Clément Feb 04 '15 at 20:39