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I am always using the packages times (actually: times-itsc from here in order to get italic small-caps) and txfonts. I use txfonts for the \coloneqq (:=) symbol. My loading order has traditionally and habitually been times-itsc -> amsmath -> textcomp -> upgreek -> txfonts. (I'm mentioning the middle three here just in case it matters for the answer; of course I'm loading many more packages around and in between.)

  1. I recently heard about the newtxtext/newtxmath package. Is the idea that I, simplifying somewhat, just replace txfonts with it, and that's it?
  2. Just now I notice that newtxtext is for text and that txfonts was already for much more than just some extra symbols (I originally included this in my package repertoire simply for the \coloneqq symbol). Should I in my current setup or with newtxtext and/or newtxmath in place of txfonts get rid of any packages? How do times(-itsc) and txfonts/newtx... interact or overlap? For example, do times and txfonts partially override each other? What is the precise effect of me loading first times-itsc and then txfonts?
  3. And how does mathptmx compare to the above?
  4. Any caveats regarding package loading order, especially with respect to amsmath?

(This question is quite general, so general answers will be fine.)

UPDATE: New insights:

  • mathptmx supersedes times.
    • The superscript numbers are larger than those of times and too large for my taste, though this is probably a feature by design.
  • newtxtext/newtxmath supersede (in combination) txfonts. With newtxtext/newtxmath, I get:
    • larger subscript numbers
    • smaller, thicker, and lower-placed footnote numbers
  • Italic small caps were previously only offered by times-itsc; now newtxtext offers them too. (Thanks, Michael Sharpe!)
Lover of Structure
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2 Answers2

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I just modified newtxtext to add italic small caps. I haven't sent it to CTAN yet but newtx.tds.zip may be downloaded from

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3825336/TeX/index.html

Instructions for manual installation are given in the README.

Michael

Michael Sharpe
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8

The txfonts package uses fonts that have many small (and some big) defects. Thus using newtx is surely better. However, these fonts don't have a "Small Caps Italic" variant.

You could use the times-itsc font, but beware that they are really a poor version, as they are obtained by scaling the uppercase letters and are badly kerned. Here's how:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fontaxes}
\usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}

\AtBeginDocument{\DeclareFontShape{T1}{\familydefault}{m}{scit}{ <-> ptmscri8t }{}}

\begin{document}

\textsc{Hello \emph{World}}

\end{document}

enter image description here

As you can see, the result is not very good. But not too worse than what you get with times-itsc:

enter image description here

I've never felt the need for italic small caps, to tell you the truth.

egreg
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  • Italicized small caps are useful because I consistently style certain name-like entities (I'll omit the details) in small caps, and textblocks containing those will, in italicized contexts, look smoother when all of their text is uniformly italicized. / I do think that overdoing the styling can be distracting to the reader and it is good for experts to draw attention to this, but there are contexts where this is very useful, as proven (on a more abstract level) by the existence of intricate syntax highlighting schemes for programming languages. – Lover of Structure Dec 24 '12 at 10:18
  • @LoverofStructure You might try asking the author of newtx to add slanted/italic small caps. – egreg Dec 24 '12 at 10:21
  • Does my use of txfonts override times(-itsc)? I mainly need its \coloneqq symbol. Any suggestions on what I could omit in my setup? – Lover of Structure Dec 24 '12 at 10:40
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    @LoverofStructure Yes, your usage will override the text fonts and you'll get txfonts by default, which doesn't really mix well with the (fake) small caps italic, as my example shows (newtxtext uses the same fonts as txfonts, with adjusted kerning). You can look at [Importing a single symbol from a different font])http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/14386/importing-a-single-symbol-from-a-different-font) for the \coloneqq problem. – egreg Dec 24 '12 at 11:24
  • Oh, as it turns out a lot of other macros aren't there or don't work if I omit txfonts: \varnothing, \neq (dependence on \notsign), \lhd (not sure why), \Subset, \nSubset, \nexists, \ncong, \ntriangleleft - strange! I guess I'll keep my times-itsc (the italic small caps are thankfully not overridden later) and load newtx... after that. Thanks! – Lover of Structure Dec 24 '12 at 12:06
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    @LoverofStructure Note that txfonts pulled a lot of these symbols from AMS symbols, so \usepackage{amssymb,newtxtext,newtxmath} should be fine. Even better, the latest version of newtx should give you everything out of the box, so update your packages, and use \usepackage{newtxtext,newtxmath}. Regarding Michael's answer, you would even get italic small caps with the latest of the latest version of newtx. – mafp Dec 26 '12 at 23:40