31

I really love the font Baskerville. However I could not find a perfect replacment for TeXlive. Even though the pseudo-version like librebaskerville does exist, but it's too thick and doesn't look so beautiful. What I am looking for is like this:

Baskerville - František Štorm Version

sample of Baskerville typeface

So I was wondering, is it possible to download the "real" Baskerville font and make it usable for LaTeX?

Source for image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BaskervilleSpec.svg

Martin Schröder
  • 15,156
KOF
  • 5,019
  • 9
    Theoretically if you switch to XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, you can use the actual font, provided that you have it. – Count Zero Feb 28 '13 at 15:04
  • Found an Open Baskerville at http://klepas.org/openbaskerville/, but not sure it looks the same as the original one. – KOF Feb 28 '13 at 15:08
  • 11
    There's no such thing as the "real" Baskerville font. There are umpteen version around that call themselves so, and that is simply one of them. – egreg Feb 28 '13 at 15:12
  • @egreg well, I mean the font looks really like the original one, so which version do you guys recommend for use of Latex? – KOF Feb 28 '13 at 15:15
  • 2
    With Xe(La)TeX you can use OpenType fonts as you wish. In LaTeX, you can use some commercial fonts trough nbaserv or baskervillenova. And there is also the free fonts loaded by baskervald (but I don't know if those are what you want. – Manuel Feb 28 '13 at 15:41
  • As for Open Baskerville and baskervald, unfortunately none of them looks like the font shown in the above figure :( – KOF Feb 28 '13 at 15:49
  • 1
    Hmm, the N of Nutgarden looks like a swash of some sort. Libre, GFS, New Baskerville all appear to have 'modern' parentheses. When you say that's 'Real Baskerville', is it made with metal type? – Brent.Longborough Feb 28 '13 at 16:39
  • 1
    @KOF As others have said, there are a lot of (electronic) fonts claiming to be Baskerville. Could you point to what you feel is the 'real deal', either electronic or in metal? – Joseph Wright Feb 28 '13 at 17:04
  • I just download the sampler from Storm Type Foundry, and you're right - it really is a beautiful font, full of grace and functionality. – Brent.Longborough Feb 28 '13 at 18:34
  • As there are many kinds of fonts called Baskerville, I just simply want the font shown in the figure (if it's not commerical). It looks really nice. – KOF Feb 28 '13 at 21:24
  • 1
    @KOF It is commercial, €295... for a 13-set family – Brent.Longborough Feb 28 '13 at 22:24
  • You copied the image from wikipedia, doesn't that require attribution? Second, there is also LaTeX support for Berthold Baskerville BQ, but that is again commercial. – mafp Feb 28 '13 at 23:10
  • @mafp Seems not to be required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BaskervilleSpec.svg – Speravir Mar 01 '13 at 00:17
  • 2
    @Speravir helpful pointer. From the wikipedia page I learned that this is BaskervilleTenPro.otf, which probably means it is this one from Storm Type, for 295 Euro as Brent said. – mafp Mar 01 '13 at 00:39
  • 4
    @egreg I think Baskerville 1757 is the real Baskerville, as it follows the original design as close as possible. – mafp Mar 01 '13 at 09:49
  • @mafp : I wouldn't want to get into "Foundry Wars", but B.1757 consists of just two variants, whereas Storm's has 14 (including specific point-size-targetted variants) – Brent.Longborough Mar 15 '13 at 12:49
  • 2
    @Brent.Longborough That is the price for sticking to the original of John Baskerville: it had no bold italics, and all the other variants. – mafp Mar 15 '13 at 14:30

7 Answers7

22
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{kpfonts,baskervald}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\[ f(x)=\int_1^\infty \frac1{x^2}\,\mathrm dx=1 \]
\itshape\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

uses the Kepler fonts for math

enter image description here

21

  1. I think the quality of the free Baskervald ADF font is very good. See texdoc baskervaldadf for the sample.

  2. Of course you can buy a commercial Baskerville and either use it directly with XeTeX/LuaTeX or use with pdfTeX if TeX support is available. For example, I wrote some time ago the pacakge nbaskerv for a popular New Baskerville commercial font.

Boris
  • 38,129
  • The Baskervald ADF looks nice. Anyway, could you please recommend a suitable math font for it? – KOF Mar 01 '13 at 01:47
  • 3
    Well, you always can use http://www.ctan.org/pkg/mathastext for an ad hoc solution. However, I do not know about a dedicated math font for Baskerville. It would be interesting to make one, maybe using GFS Baskerville for Greek. – Boris Mar 01 '13 at 05:50
  • @Boris Greeting from another Boris. Your suggestion to use mathastext is the most practical (and best looking solution) for documents that don't really need mathematical formulas, but use math mode through a package like siunitx for example. – XXX Oct 06 '16 at 12:41
12

There exists now an extended Baskerville package for LaTeX named Baskervaldx. The manual of Baskervaldx recommends the usage of newtxmath as math font. With Latin Modern as monospace font and TeX Gyre Heros (improved Helvetica clone) as sans serif font, the LaTeX code is:

\usepackage{lmodern} % monospace font
\usepackage[scale=0.89]{tgheros} % Helvetica is too big
\usepackage[osf]{Baskervaldx} % tosf in text, tlf in math
\usepackage[baskervaldx,cmintegrals,bigdelims,vvarbb]{newtxmath} % math italic letters from Baskervaldx
\usepackage[cal=boondoxo]{mathalfa} % mathcal from STIX, unslanted a bit

Here is an example:

Baskervaldx Example

Fabian Heller
  • 323
  • I really like this solution, and have implemented it myself! +1 \ I'll just say, if you want more standard text-style numbers, so $1$ is the same as 1, remove osf option from the Baskervladx package. (Thank you, nigel, for this: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/502242/81928.) – Sam OT Jul 31 '19 at 11:22
6

Just to add another option, because I haven't seen you refusing, you can use Xe(La)TeX with the font you want. In case of using Mac, Baskerville comes by default.

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Baskerville}

With some dummy text: enter image description here

About the math, in my opinion, Computer/Latin Modern looks pretty good with it.

But, as an alternative, you can use MathTime Pro fonts (lite version is free, and can be loaded with \usepackage[lite]{mtpro2}). I don't personally like it, but Michael Spivak seems to like it, as you can see here.

And @Boris said, you can use mathastext package. In the package's showcase you find an example to use it with XeLaTeX.

\usepackage[no-math]{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Baskerville}
\usepackage[defaultmathsizes,italic]{mathastext}
Martin
  • 711
Manuel
  • 27,118
3

The Baskerville from František Štorm (Štorm Type Foundry in Prague, STF) as mentioned in the question. His fonts always have very high quality.

About 15 years ago, Štorm cooperated with TeX community in Czech. His last project was Baskerville Math, the project paid by Charles University in Prague and I was consultant. But this project was not finalized. I don't know exactly why.

Now, the cooperation STF with TeX community disappeared. My communication with F. Štorm (about three ears ago) showed that he is oriented only to selling fonts, there is no free alternatives now.

wipet
  • 74,238
2

Depending on your environment and your needs, you might be able to use Open Baskerville. It is not complete but what's there is really well done. Simon Pascal Klein's webpage goes in to great detail about the history of the typeface as well as the issues involved in this particular revival.

Brendan Howell
  • 520
2
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fourier}
\usepackage{baskervald}

IMO ADF Baskervald matches better with Fourier.

Aydin
  • 1,983