When combining listings and JetBrains Mono * glyphs drop to the baseline (and are too big)

Question

Preparing a book where I use JetBrains Mono (Github Repo) (JBM) for code I noticed that in all the listings the * characters where rendered far to deep (on the baseline) and quite big. Also the *** ligature came out as three (fallen) * glyphs.

At this point JBM was declared as a new family:

\newfontfamily\JBMmdfamily{JetBrains Mono}[
  UprightFont    = *-Regular,
  ItalicFont     = *-Italic,
  BoldFont       = *-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = *-BoldItalic
]

After fiddling around a bit I found that adding {*}{*}1 {***}{{***}}3 entries to a literate key in \lstset{} seemed to work. So I exchanged those characters by themselves which is funny but it works. Sort of. Looking closer I noticed that in the output spaces after those characters disappeared. Adding the keepspaces setting remedied that, so:

\lstset{
  keepspaces        = true,
%   showspaces        = false,
  literate  = {*}{*}1 {***}{{***}}3
}

(showspaces = truea lets other funny things happen but that is out of scope here.)

Later I noticed that just using

\setmonofont{JetBrains Mono}[…]

instead of

\newfontfamily\JBMmdfamily{JetBrains Mono}[…]

with the same body solved all those issues, no other \foo needed. I just don’t understand how that works. Someone care to explain?

My new problem now is, I need \texttt (etc.) to switch to the text typewriter type.

Here’s sort of a MWE:

    %!TEX TS-program = lualatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec,listings}
\setmonofont{JetBrains Mono}[
  UprightFont    = -Regular,
  ItalicFont     = -Italic,
  BoldFont       = -Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = -BoldItalic,
]
\newfontfamily\JBMmdfamily{JetBrains Mono}[
  UprightFont    = -Regular,
  ItalicFont     = -Italic,
  BoldFont       = -Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = -BoldItalic,
]
\parskip=3mm
\parindent=0pt
\begin{document}
\subsection*{Both bindings seem to function:}
ttfamily:    {\ttfamily xy  z + a *** b }
JBMmdfamily: {\JBMmdfamily xy  z + a *** b }
\subsection{listings needs either \textbackslash{}ttfamily:}
lstlisting/ttfamily:       \lstinline[basicstyle = \ttfamily]! xy * z + a *** b !
lstlisting/JBMmdfamily: \lstinline[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]! xy  z + a *** b !
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \ttfamily]
\ttfamily:     xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]
\JBMmdfamily:  xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\subsection{… or keepspace &amp; literate:}
\lstset{
  keepspaces        = true,
  % showspaces        = true,
  literate  = {}{}1 {}{{*}}3
}
lstlisting/ttfamily:       \lstinline[basicstyle = \ttfamily]! xy  z + a *** b !
lstlisting/JBMmdfamily: \lstinline[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]! xy  z + a *** b !
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \ttfamily]
\ttfamily:     xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]
\JBMmdfamily:  xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Any ideas? Thanks for all nudges and pointers …

Just corrected the source and added a picture of my result. There were a few errors, sorry for that.

I don't have your font, but perhaps you can use this https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/303477/2388 — Ulrike Fischer, Jun 28 '21 at 10:18
@UlrikeFischer The fonts are available at https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/#intro — Thérèse, Jun 28 '21 at 14:06
@Thérèse: Thanks for mentioning that. I included links above. — Moss_the_TeXie, Jun 28 '21 at 20:08

egreg · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-28T17:34:13.743

The listings package uses \textasteriskcentered when it finds *; if the font has the character at U+2217, it uses it and, lo and behold, the character in the JetBrains Mono font at that slot is a lowered big asterisk. Unless the family is \ttdefault.

In the package we find

\lst@ProcessOther {"2A}{\lst@ttfamily*\textasteriskcentered}

which exactly means what I described above.

It turns out, however, that if the definition is changed to use \lst@ttfamily**, the ligature only works in \lstinline and not in a full fledged lstlisting environment (characters are treated in different ways). Thus literate is needed anyway.

Note: font selection is slightly different because I don't have the fonts available in the system, so I need to call them by file name.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec,listings}
\setmonofont{JetBrainsMono}[
  Extension      = .ttf,
  UprightFont    = -Regular,
  ItalicFont     = -Italic,
  BoldFont       = -Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = -Bold-Italic,
]
\newfontfamily\JBMmdfamily{JetBrainsMono}[
  Extension      = .ttf,
  UprightFont    = -Regular,
  ItalicFont     = -Italic,
  BoldFont       = -Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = -Bold-Italic,
]
\makeatletter
\lst@CCPutMacro\lst@ProcessOther{"2A}{\lst@ttfamily**}@empty\z@@empty
\makeatother
\lstset{
  keepspaces = true,
  % showspaces = true,
  % literate = {*}{{*}}3,
}
\begin{document}
The wrong character:{\ttfamily x\textasteriskcentered y}
\bigskip
ttfamily:    {\ttfamily xy  z + a *** b }
JBMmdfamily: {\JBMmdfamily xy  z + a *** b }
lstlisting/ttfamily:       \lstinline[basicstyle = \ttfamily]! xy  z + a *** b !
lstlisting/JBMmdfamily: \lstinline[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]! xy  z + a *** b !
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \ttfamily]
\ttfamily:     xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\begin{lstlisting}[basicstyle = \JBMmdfamily]
\JBMmdfamily:      xy  z + a *** b
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

Uncommenting the literate line yields, instead

Thanks for your answer, but … I know. ;-) You even don’t have to define \threestar, as literate = {*}{*}1 {***}{{***}}3 works perfectly—I just don’t understand why or how. It seems that \texttt does a few things that macros produced by \newfontfamily don’t which in turn makes only \texttt work with listings (without using esoteric tricks like those above ;-). — Moss_the_TeXie, Jun 28 '21 at 16:51

When combining listings and JetBrains Mono * glyphs drop to the baseline (and are too big)

1 Answers1