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I would like to replace the "a" (double-story minuscule) for the single-story minuscule in Latin Modern. I really hate that the printed "a" is not the same as the handwritten "a", and would like to uniformly replace it in LaTeX. Is that possible, if so how? Is there an alternative version for the glyph "a" in Latin Modern? If so, how do I access it?

If not, are there other fonts where such a replacement is possible, and which contains the appropriate symbols to create mathematics?

doncherry
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ltcomdata
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  • IMHO the two glyphs are different for a good reason... it improves readability, a thing at which a well-written (La)TeX document excels. – Count Zero Jul 30 '12 at 19:18
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    @CountZero The distinction is not made in all fonts and there is nothing wrong with asking for this sort of fine-grained control in the domains of fonts and typesetting. Double-story a is special because it is literally the only letter that's commonly printed in a way in which it is nearly never handwritten. Finally, the argument for readability is entirely independent of LaTeX (Word and any other textprocessor also just pick whatever the font has at this codepoint), and LaTeX glorification is out of place right here, because it is irrelevant and not helpful. – Lover of Structure Jul 30 '12 at 19:34
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    @CountZero Finally, there are a hundred improvements and adaptations one could make to the letter shapes of the modern Latin alphabet, but noone does: the two a-shapes exist just for historical reasons, with the distinction being maintained out of tradition and convenience (and lack of distinct harm in not doing so). However defending a distinction for the letter "a" in particular would in a consistent worldview also entail the need for making lots of other changes to our letter design. – Lover of Structure Jul 30 '12 at 19:36
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    @ltcomdata Not all fonts offer both glyphs by design (and that this is regarded a design choice is an arbitrary cultural convention), though some do. Fonts that cover the IPA definitely do. That said, how to access those symbols is something I'll let someone more knowledgeable in that area answer. One more thing: The one-story-a might look unusual to the eye in certain contexts and people, but the only reason is that we're so used to always seeing double-story-a in the non-italicized (upright) style. Someone else can elaborate on the practical serif/sans-serif distinction here. – Lover of Structure Jul 30 '12 at 19:41
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    @user14996 -- while i don't disagree that there's nothing wrong with asking for alternate shapes for some letters in a font, the latin modern fonts are intended to be "a successor" to the original tex computer modern fonts. (see this article regarding the history of the lm fonts.) thus, such changes are not likely to be made, as this would violate the original intention of their creation. one other small point ... double-story (roman) g is also usually printed in a different shape than handwritten; a is not alone. – barbara beeton Jul 30 '12 at 20:59
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    @user14996: I never said there was anything wrong with asking this question. On the contrary, I am intrigued and it made me really curious whether (La)TeX can be controlled to such extent. On the other hand, designing a font is not a business to be taken lightly. There are really few fonts out there that match the quality of lmodern. The question reminds me of this post. – Count Zero Jul 30 '12 at 23:11
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    @ltcomdata: I've given the question a thought and maybe this could be of some help, at least for starters. – Count Zero Jul 30 '12 at 23:12
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    There are not too many serif fonts with single-story minuscule a in the roman that are suitable for body text. I can only think of Bembo Schoolbook, LuMarc, Stone Informal. There's plenty (including lmodern) where the italic a is single-story. And of course very many sans-serifs but these are not-traditional for mathematics. If none of these suit your needs, feel free to design your own lmodern variant complete with alternate a. – Lev Bishop Jul 31 '12 at 02:40
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    To all: This is great discussion. Also thx to Barbara for pointing out the two-story-g. // Some facts I'd like to summarize now about the two-story variants of a and g: (1) Italic styles tend to replace two-story by one-story shapes in a given font. (2) Serif fonts nearly always use two-story designs (for their upright styles, though somewhat less so for "g"). (3) Sans-serif fonts are much more likely to have one-story shapes, though I still wouldn't call them "dominant" there (esp. for "a"). (4) In all scenarios, two-story-a is much more common than two-story-g (=one-story-g is not uncommon). – Lover of Structure Jul 31 '12 at 19:45
  • As it has been pointed out, the 'single story' a has its roots in italic calligraphy (from the renaissance time), whereas the 'two story' a comes from older hands (carolingian and blackletter minuscules use the 'two story' a, for example). Typographically, it's probably very hard to nicely match the 'single story' a into LM, since it would be a mismatch to the rest of the font. IMHO, if it's an important feature for you, then you should probably use a font that has a native 'single story' a. – mvarela Aug 01 '12 at 06:31
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    @user14996 If you look at it closely, I am sure there are plenty of letters most people don't write like in an upright serif font – not the same letters for everyone, but many people have a "calligraphic" sort of handwriting. I second Lev Bishop's idea that you should go looking for a font that matches your personal preferences more closely. Or you can design your own, but just patching LM seems a bit like a mismatch to me, as explained by others. – ienissei Aug 01 '12 at 08:14
  • @ienissei No and no. 1. Two-story a/g differ substantially in a way that you can even characterize topologically from how anyone would ever handwrite it (look up "homotopy-equivalence"). 2. There are cursive scripts, which tend to differ by country and timeperiod, but they are a very different style that has evolved in parallel from printed lettershapes for a long time now. Thus, schools teach the handwriting of printed and cursive styles separately. 3. As long as a font has glyphs for similar letters such as b/d/p/q, you simply must not claim that single-story-a would in principle not fit in. – Lover of Structure Aug 01 '12 at 17:31
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    @mvarela The argument about a mismatch is untenable: It's the two-story-a whose shape is quite unique. One-story-a fits nicely into any font that doesn't design b/d/p/q to have intentionally differing designs. By picking a one-story-a glyph, you're logically increasing the consistency of the font's design. So the supposed mismatch is really not about internal font consistency; it's about the fact that the eye is used to a two-story-a in serif fonts. – Lover of Structure Aug 01 '12 at 19:39
  • @mvarela You can certainly question this cultural convention, but any consistency argument breaks down once you try to support it with specific evidence and examples. Again, if someone really designed his font in a way where he algorithmically set parameters characterizing letter shape consistency, visual distinguishability between letters, etc. and thereby came to the conclusion that the one-story-a just would't fit in but changing just this one letter was the lowest-effort way of maintaining the style etc., I'd buy it; but such an argument has never been made. Everything has been said. – Lover of Structure Aug 01 '12 at 19:45
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    @user14996 All I am saying is that it is perhaps a mess, but we can't change it just because it would seem logical to. Real-world typographic conventions are such that we have a double-story "a" with most serif fonts, and that we lack matching one-story characters to put in as a replacement for that specific font (because each font has a particular feel, and you can't switch things at will). Hence the proposition: find a font that does what you want, or design one from scratch, or design a matching "a" character for an existing font. I am not criticising your own views on font design as such. – ienissei Aug 01 '12 at 21:30
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    @user14996 I think ienissei put it very eloquently. It's not about whether it would be logical or not, but rather whether it would fit with the design of the LM font. It wouldn't, most likely. As you said, this is all 'convention' and it's based on history, so of course you could go and edit the LM font to change the 'a' glyph, if you so wished. You'd probably get something 'ugly', but this is all very subjective, anyway. Typography is an art not a science (or at least, much more of an art than a science). – mvarela Aug 02 '12 at 13:26
  • Okay, thanks for the discussion, I just wanted it to be clear that it's not about font consistency but about stylistic conventions. Yes, I agree that picking a font that uses one-story-a will be the easiest solution. If you have a font that has both (maybe due to its IPA coverage), it'll probably be easier in TeX than elsewhere to programmatically replace a (U+0061) by ɑ (U+0251). // Random historical remark: I think the serif/sans-serif difference in "stories" comes from the time when italics was a style with generally italics-only fonts. – Lover of Structure Aug 02 '12 at 18:21

1 Answers1

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This is maybe only a point into a possible solution, but I had a similar problem where I wanted to change the font for just two characters. I used XeTeX and \XeTeXinterchartokenstate etc.. Here is my post about it "changing font of one (or a small number of) text character only" and you could consult other posts here or the XeTeX manual (I am in no way trumpeting myself here) for better guidance. I believe it should be possible to modify that to do the same as what you want (you would have to substitute \JapSubstFont with some appropriate code, something that would replace bad-a with good-a.

\XeTeXinterchartokenstate=1 
\newXeTeXintercharclass\JapSubst  
\XeTeXcharclass"0065=\JapSubst 
% "0065 is unicode for the letter e  use the code for the letter a, etc

\XeTeXinterchartoks 0 \JapSubst = {\begingroup\JapSubstFont} 
\XeTeXinterchartoks 255 \JapSubst = {\begingroup\JapSubstFont} 
\XeTeXinterchartoks \JapSubst 0 = {\endgroup} 
\XeTeXinterchartoks \JapSubst 255 = {\endgroup}

PS I heartily agree that this is not an inappropriate question, and IMHO latex still has a way to go in terms of providing practical mechanisms for this. The philosophy of "let us do the typographical thinking for you, you just bang out content" has become a little quaint/strained as TeX has matured ;-)

(and something for the meta: why no smileys? Makes it seem like we have no S-o'-H...all work and no joy makes TeX a dull toy. No snarkiness intended--TeX is the CaT's whiskers, AfAiAc (tip a canoe and TeXSE, too!))

PS I just realized this may not have been your question. You weren't asking about how to do it, but looking for appropriate fonts, it seems. Sorry...

Community
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asllearner
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  • As to your meta question, bad news, check this out: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/636/should-smilies-be-turned-into-images-in-questions-and-answers – Count Zero Jul 31 '12 at 11:21
  • I see...well I agree with what appears to be the preponderant feeling there, that images are distracting, but text smileys seem to be ok with people there, so I guess that's not so bad. When in Rome, ....thanks for the edit, btw – asllearner Aug 01 '12 at 02:06
  • Note that the word boundary class currently has the number 4095 (since 2016) instead of 255. – Marijn Mar 10 '23 at 22:01