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The TeX font catalogue doesn't allow you to see which fonts have real small caps. Some fonts do not have real small caps (e.g. any of the mathdesign ones). But some do (computer modern and therefore lmodern and cm-super...)

I have restricted this to fonts that come with TeXLive, but I guess answers about other standard LaTeX distributions (MikTeX etc) wouldn't be out of place.

lockstep
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Seamus
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4 Answers4

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Two fonts with accurately designed small capitals are Palatino (\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}) and Libertine (\usepackage{libertine}).

No. 2, p. 17 of the 2005 volume of the "TeXnische Komödie" (the journal of the German-speaking TeX community DANTE) includes an article by Ralf Stubner and Walter Schmidt about the design of "real small caps" and oldstyle figures for the Palatino. The text is in German, but see page 21 for a lineup of "real" and "faked" small capitals.

klwire
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lockstep
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romande, berenisadf, electrumadf and venturisadf support real small-caps. berenisadf and venturisadf also include italic small-caps and venturisadf offers outline small-caps for certain families. electrumadf includes oblique small-caps. See the documentation for details.

Disclaimer: I wrote the package support for these fonts though I had nothing to do with the fonts themselves.

Latin Modern includes oblique small-caps as well as the upright variety. I can't remember if lmodern supports this but cfr-lm (another disclaimer here) definitely does.

romande:

romande

electrumadf:

electrumadf

berenisadf:

berenisadf

venturisadf:

venturisadf - italic small-caps venturisadf - swash small-caps in upright and italic venturisadf - old titling venturisadf - further small-caps possibilities

venturisadf supports a number of different fonts arranged into different families so you would not use all of these in the same document - they are just intended to show some of the possibilities. See the documentation for details of what's available and how to access what with package options and extended font selection commands.

cfr-lm oblique small-caps from Latin Modern:

Latin Modern oblique small-caps

cfr
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The newtx and newpx fonts have "real" small caps. As for the quality, I can't be judge of it.

Franck Pastor
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LaTeX does not fake smallcaps, so any font that gives you smallcaps has real smallcaps.

خالد حسني
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  • I refer you to section 4.2.1 of this document: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/mathdesign/mathdesign-doc.pdf It's not LaTeX doing the faking, it's the font designers. – Seamus Sep 08 '10 at 12:33
  • Try loading the \mathpazo package first with and then without the sc option. The latter case seems like faked smallcaps to me. – lockstep Sep 08 '10 at 12:36
  • The documentation agrees with you. The sc option uses family pplx. – TH. Sep 08 '10 at 12:40
  • Very bad, I though no TeX developer would dare to commit such a typographic crime! Still those are solitary cases, and are the exceptions not the rule. I this question was which fonts provide fake smallcaps, then it would make more sense. – خالد حسني Sep 08 '10 at 14:01
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    @Seamus: Hmm? The way I read that, it looks the fonts in question are commercial fonts, and in order to get real small capitals you have to buy associated "expert" fonts. How are the people behind the "mathdesign" package "the font designers" in question -- it seems like they only did the math fonts, whatever that is supposed to mean... – SamB Nov 30 '10 at 17:24
  • @SamB that isn't supposed to be "faking" in a value-judgment sense, just in a "the package has fake small caps" sense. And by font-designers I suppose I meant package maintainers. – Seamus Nov 30 '10 at 17:45