Looking for semibold version of erewhon

Question

I am looking for defining a semibold Erewhon font for text mode. If there is none I'd be willing to fake it in the same manner as https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/290036/194729 but I don't how I can adapt that snippet.

The technique used in the answer you reference depends on the fact that there (for latin modern) the design of each character is different for different sizes, so a smaller size can be scaled up and thus at the same time become (somewhat) bolder. I don't know whether erewhon has been created with different design sizes, and that must be true for the scaling technique to be effective. — barbara beeton, Jun 01 '23 at 16:35
I'm sure there is some kind of fake option in fontspec but I do not know it (AutoFakeBold? FakeBold?) I can show how it can look in ConTeXt, where this can be done with \definefontfeature[poormansbold][boldened-10] and then by using that fontfeature. — mickep, Jun 01 '23 at 17:38
A better choice is to use the font software to increase different vertical and horizontal weights. — M. Logic, Jun 02 '23 at 15:42

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '23 at 18:10

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{erewhon}
\begin{document}
One two three four five six.
{\fontspec[FakeBold=1,LetterSpace=.5]{erewhon} One two three four five six.}
{\fontspec[FakeBold=2,LetterSpace=1]{erewhon} One two three four five six.}
{\fontspec[FakeBold=3,LetterSpace=1.7]{erewhon} One two three four five six.}
{\bfseries One two three four five six.}
\end{document}

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 02 '23 at 14:48

No real chance to get it with pdflatex, but you can use FakeBold with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.

You also want to define an interface for semibold.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Erewhon}[
  Extension=.otf,
  UprightFont=-Regular,
  ItalicFont=-Italic,
  BoldFont=-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont=-BoldItalic,
  FontFace={sb}{n}{Font=-Regular,FakeBold=3},
  FontFace={sb}{it}{Font=-Italic,FakeBold=3},
]
\DeclareRobustCommand{\sbseries}{\fontseries{sb}\selectfont}
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textsb}{\sbseries}
\begin{document}
Medium, \textsb{Semibold}, \textbf{Bold}
{\itshape Medium, \textsb{Semibold}, \textbf{Bold}}
\end{document}

If you want to replace boldface with the (faked) semibold:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Erewhon}[
  Extension=.otf,
  UprightFont=-Regular,
  ItalicFont=-Italic,
  BoldFont=-Regular,
  BoldItalicFont=-Italic,
  BoldFeatures={FakeBold=3},
  BoldItalicFeatures={FakeBold=3},
]
\begin{document}
Medium \textbf{Bold}
{\itshape Medium, \textbf{Bold}}
\end{document}

Looking for semibold version of erewhon

2 Answers2