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I am (tentatively) using Minion Pro in XeTeX for my book, but I need to typeset a phonetic notation, for which Minion Pro does not have the glyphs. Are there any good alternatives that can match it?

Here is my Microsoft Word version (the one I am trying to reproduce in latex):

Desired phonetic

and here is the best I've done so far, using ugly Microsoft Sans Serif (also note that my brackets are not that good looking either):

My phonetic

By the way, here is how I do it in code (it would be great to get a confirmation that this is a sane way of doing this):

% Define a font capable of rendering IPA (phonetic) symbols
\newcommand{\phoneticFont}{Microsoft Sans Serif}
\newcommand{\phonetic}[1]{ {\fontspec{\phoneticFont} #1} }

...
was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phonetic{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.

If you have any suggestions (or tips) I would appreciate them. Even if it's using a different font. I just like Minion Pro as it's OpenType and that sits well with XeTeX.

doncherry
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Andriy Drozdyuk
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2 Answers2

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There are two issues you need to consider here I suspect: the font shape itself, serif vs sans serif; and the font apparent size (MS font in particular tend to look much bigger than other fonts.

For the first issue, Aerlinthe is indeed correct, the SIL fonts seem to be a good bet, especially Gentium which looks very similar to Minion Pro.

For the second problem, I suggest using the fontspec option Scale=MatchLowercase. this will make sure that all font used will match in size.

A demonstration of this is 

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Minion Pro}
\begin{document}
% Define a font capable of rendering IPA (phonetic) symbols
\newcommand{\phoneticFont}{Arial Unicode MS}
\newcommand{\phonetic}[1]{ {\fontspec{\phoneticFont} #1} }
\newcommand{\phoneticScaled}[1]{ {\fontspec[Scale=MatchLowercase]{\phoneticFont} #1} }

was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phonetic{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.

was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phoneticScaled{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.

\renewcommand{\phoneticFont}{Gentium}
was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phonetic{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.

was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phoneticScaled{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.
\end{document}

which produce the following result

As you can see, irrespective of the font used the scaled version fits much more nicely with the text.

So for your actual document the file should look something like

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Minion Pro}

% Define a font capable of rendering IPA (phonetic) symbols
\newfontfamily{\phoneticfamily}[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Gentium} %replace "Gentium" with the font of your choice
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\phonetic}{\phoneticfamily}

\begin{document}

was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German,
Bugia or Bougia in Italian, Bougie [\phonetic{bu'ʒi}] in French or Bidjaya.

\end{document}
ArTourter
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    You shouldn't use \fontspec in your command definition. To define a new font correctly you should use \newfontfamily. E.g. \newfonfamily\IPAfont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Gentium} and then invoke the font with {\IPAfont text}. – Alan Munn Mar 07 '12 at 04:07
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    @Alan Also \DeclareTextFontCommand{\IPA}{\IPAfont} and then \IPA{text}, after having defined \IPAfont with \newfontfamily – egreg Mar 07 '12 at 07:50
  • Can either of you guys post a complete answer please...? I'm a bit confused as to how to combine two of these comments together... – Andriy Drozdyuk Mar 07 '12 at 18:00
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    Indeed @egreg and Alan are right but I was simply trying to show the effect of the different option while keeping closely to the original code. I will amend my answer to include what the actual TeX file should contain. – ArTourter Mar 07 '12 at 19:49
  • @egreg Why should I use DeclareTextFontcommand vs. just newcommand? Thanks. – Andriy Drozdyuk Mar 08 '12 at 00:26
  • from the fontspec documentations, "For cases when a specific font with a specific feature set is going to be re-used many times in a document, it is inefficient to keep calling \fontspec for every use. While the \fontspec command does not define a new font instance after the first call, the feature options must still be parsed and processed. For this reason, new commands can be created for loading a particular font family with the \newfontfamily command" \newcommand effectively re-execute the command itself at every call. – ArTourter Mar 08 '12 at 01:51
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    @drozzy With \DeclareTextFontCommand you get a robust command that will remain untouched when found in a moving argument such as a section title or a caption. – egreg Mar 08 '12 at 09:57
  • I thought of continuing this question line, but I rather make it into it's own question: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/47259/why-use-declaretextfontcommand-vs-just-newcommand – Andriy Drozdyuk Mar 08 '12 at 15:30
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Compilation of fonts suitable (and unsuitable) for phonetic transcription.

The SIL fonts are a safe bet.

Aerlinthe
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  • Where did you get that document? Do you know if it's a part of some larger book "Xetex for linguists"? If so - I would love to know where to find it! Thanks – Andriy Drozdyuk Mar 07 '12 at 20:24
  • It's an unreleased draft. It's intended for those who are already familiar with LaTeX (to supplement resources like LaTeX for Linguists) and so there's nothing more to it than introducing the benefits of Unicode fonts and what to change to go from LaTeX to XeTeX, info which are easily found since you're already on this site. – Aerlinthe Mar 07 '12 at 21:17