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A little while ago I wanted to write a letter to someone using one of the dropcap fonts at The LaTeX Font Catalogue and wasn't able to figure out how to do it in the time I had. Is there an easy way to insert one of these as a dropcap at the start of a paragraph?

Heck, most of these don't even have a \usepackage{foo} for how to use them, they have something like 

\input Carrickc.fd
\newcommand*\initfamily{\usefont{U}{Carrickc}{xl}{n}}

so I'm not even sure I can use them with LaTeX.

Canageek
  • 17,935

2 Answers2

14

does too have a package...

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{Carrickc,lettrine}
\renewcommand\LettrineFontHook{\Carrickcfamily}
\begin{document}
  \lettrine{A}{s} any dedicated reader can clearly see, the Ideal of practical reason is a representation of, as far as I know, the things in themselves; as I have shown elsewhere, the phenomena should only be used as a canon for our understanding.
\end{document}

You need TeX Live 2015 or current MikTeX for this or to install cfr-initials manually.

See the documentation of that package for further examples using the initials fonts which come with TeX Live. (Carrickc is one of them.)

Here's a table showing the commands available for the various sets of initials from the documentation:

decorative initials available

cfr
  • 198,882
  • 2
    (+1) This also works with MikTeX. – Thomas F. Sturm Jun 16 '15 at 06:03
  • @ThomasF.Sturm Thanks! That is good to know. (And that is pretty quick, too, so maybe they are just a bit more cautious about updates. After all, if a new package fails, people aren't significantly worse off as they can just not use it... ;). – cfr Jun 16 '15 at 12:14
  • Are there similar packages for other drop-caps? I just grabbed that one basically at random: What if I wanted to use Art Nouveau Initialen or Eichenlaubinitialen? – Canageek Jun 23 '15 at 21:27
  • @Canageek There are similar packages for each of the decorative initials fonts supplied in the initials/ directory. texdoc cfr-initials for the full list. Or find cfr-initials on CTAN. Just follow the link I posted in my answer. – cfr Jun 23 '15 at 22:03
  • @Canageek See edit above. – cfr Jun 23 '15 at 22:13
  • @RobtA Using PNG is terrible advice for anybody distributing things electronically as they will not scale. If you want to use an image rather than a font, despite the increase in document size, at least use a vector format such as PDF. – cfr Feb 06 '17 at 01:26
  • @cfr Yes! I happen to be using LaTeX solely for printed (on paper) documents, where the size is exact, and the PDF must meet commercial printing standards. I entirely forgot about electronic distribution. For paper, using raster instead of vector has many advantages. –  Feb 06 '17 at 19:06
10

Here is an example using the lettrine package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx, type1cm, lettrine}
\begin{document}
\lettrine[image=true, lines=3, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{L.png}{orem}  ipsum
 dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam vel dapibus ex, non lobortis
 sem. Quisque in nunc id justo ultricies tempor vitae nec ante. Pellentesque
 volutpat, dui sit amet euismod dictum, turpis velit ultrices nisi, vitae
 porta tortor lacus ut turpis. Vestibulum venenatis libero in turpis 
 viverra ultricies. Nam consequat efficitur risus vel consectetur. 
 Quisque volutpat neque sit amet nisi dictum cursus. Integer fringilla 
 nisi ac risus luctus, vitae malesuada ligula fermentum. Aliquam ac erat
 eget nulla gravida varius. In eu gravida nisi. Praesent dui urna, 
 pulvinar a lacus luctus, lacinia pharetra leo.  

\lettrine[lines=3, findent=3pt, nindent=0pt]{L}{orem}  ipsum dolor sit amet,
 consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam vel dapibus ex, non lobortis sem. Quisque 
 in nunc id justo ultricies tempor vitae nec ante. Pellentesque volutpat,
 dui sit amet euismod dictum, turpis velit ultrices nisi, vitae porta 
 tortor lacus ut turpis. Vestibulum venenatis libero in turpis viverra 
 ultricies. Nam consequat efficitur risus vel consectetur. Quisque volutpat 
 neque sit amet nisi dictum cursus. Integer fringilla nisi ac risus luctus,
 vitae malesuada ligula fermentum. Aliquam ac erat eget nulla gravida 
 varius. In eu gravida nisi. Praesent dui urna, pulvinar a lacus luctus,
 lacinia pharetra leo. 
\end{document}

Resulting in: Output

And this is the L.png which can be changed to get illuminated letters. The letter L.

R. Schumacher
  • 9,895
  • So in text those will be images, so searching will not pick up that word? Also, where do you get orem from? How do I look that up for each font (I just grabbed a fancy drop-cap font at random) – Canageek Jun 23 '15 at 21:24