Real number symbol (UTF-8: ℝ) in XeTeX

Question

How can I get the 'real number' sign (something like \mathbb{R} with the amssymb package in LaTeX) in XeTeX?

Can you add the essential part of your preamble, particularly the font setting? — egreg, Mar 25 '13 at 21:24
The preamble is what goes from \documentclass to \begin{document}. If you plan to use amssymb you must have this. — egreg, Mar 25 '13 at 21:52
XeTeX is an extension of TeX designed to work with unicode encoding. Just as for (plain) TeX, it has no preamble in its documents — lvaneesbeeck, Mar 25 '13 at 21:53
@egreg He’s not planning to use amssymb, he only wants the \mathbb{R} sign in XeTeX. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Mar 25 '13 at 22:35
@Ivaneesbeeck Please add the username in your comment to respond properly (as I did here), otherwise the person will not be notified of your message. It would still be interesting to see your font setup. \font\1="Linux Libertine O"\1 ℝ\bye works great for me. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Mar 25 '13 at 22:36
I see; nothing prevents you from using the msbm10 font with XeTeX. In any case, if you don't set fonts, you're basically using the same setting as normal TeX. — egreg, Mar 25 '13 at 22:39
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@Jubobs Yes right! I wanted to accept my answer but it said I musted wait 2 days to do it. Time going, I forgot this thread. Thigs are fixed now! — lvaneesbeeck, Apr 21 '13 at 16:15

score 203 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 16 '17 at 15:57

203

How about this?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
Plain-\TeX{}:   & ${\rm I\!R}$\\
amssymb:        & $\mathbb{R}$
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

enter image description here

edited Jun 16 '17 at 15:57

Moriambar

11,466

answered Mar 25 '13 at 22:37

jub0bs

58,916

3

Neither of these options produce a U+211D character in the output. – Tyler Crompton Jul 08 '16 at 21:20
@TylerCrompton You need special packages to generate Unicode characters in the output: xetex - What is the difference between unicode-math and mathspec? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange – user202729 Sep 13 '21 at 15:54

Eric Jablow · Answer 2 · 2013-03-26T03:44:40.793

15

You should put your symbol format definitions in another TeX file; publications tend to have their own styles, and some may use bold Roman for fields like R instead of blackboard bold. You can swap nams.tex with aom.tex. I know, this is more common with LaTeX, but the principle still applies.

For example:

% paper.tex
\input nams.tex
$\realnumbers$ is connected.

% nams.tex
\def\realnumbers{\mathbb{R}}
% more definitions for the Notices.

% aom.tex
\def\realnumbers{\mathbf{R}}
% more definitions for the Annals.

Just change one line in paper.tex to submit to the Annals instead of the Notices.

edited Mar 26 '13 at 03:44

answered Mar 26 '13 at 03:05

Eric Jablow

251

2

Welcome to TeX.sx!. May be an example/illustration would help to support the answer. – texenthusiast Mar 26 '13 at 03:07

score 12 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 02 '24 at 18:17

12

With lualatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmathfont{Latin Modern Math}
\begin{document}
$ℝ$
\end{document}

real symbol

edited Apr 02 '24 at 18:17

PatrickT

2,923

answered Mar 26 '13 at 06:31

alfC

14,350

1

That also works in XeLaTeX. So does $\mathbb{R}$ . – Davislor Feb 05 '19 at 09:06

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 05 '19 at 07:43

10

Auto-answer:

\input amssym.tex
${\Bbb R}$
\bye

works fine

edited Feb 05 '19 at 07:43

Henri Menke

109,596

answered Mar 25 '13 at 22:44

lvaneesbeeck

3,095

Did you mean \input amssymb.tex? – jub0bs Apr 21 '13 at 16:37
@Jubobs Nope, amssym. On my computer this code snippet does the job – lvaneesbeeck Apr 26 '13 at 12:46

score 8 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

There's a couple of ways to go about this:

Using the default Computer Modern -font (which, as you've already found out, can be extended with the amssym to have access to BlackBoardBold.)
Using Unicode OpenType math fonts. Now this is a bit tricky because the glyph locations need to be (re-)told to TeX. This step can further be split into two different approaches:
1. Use just one family and change the active range by re-telling TeX the glyph positions every time the style changes (i.e. script, fraktur, etc. This is the way I've understood the unicode-math -package does it). For plain-xetex, you could do something along these lines.
2. Fix the styles to their own \families using mapping-files created with teckit_compile from SIL. See: Changing math font to OTF in XeTeX using plaintex-format.

Real number symbol (UTF-8: ℝ) in XeTeX

5 Answers5

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