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I am using Fourier maths fonts with Utopia text (\usepackage{fourier}) for a book project, but I'm not satisfied with the curly brackets \{ and \}. They are too slim, and barely distinguishable from other brackets in font size 10. Utopia with MathDesign (\usepackage[utopia]{mathdesign}) seems to have better-looking curly brackets.

Is there a way of importing just the curly brackets from MathDesign to my document, sticking to Fourier otherwise. And are the curly brackets defined by the maths fonts even if they are used outside math mode, since with MathDesign you get better-looking brackets in normal text, too.

Following egreg's answer I added the suggested lines, but the sizes of the bigger brackets are incorrect. When I load type $\{\bigl\{\Bigl\{\biggl\{\Biggl\{$, this is what I get:

enter image description here

After a bit of research, I've found that the cause seems to be the amsmath package. I'm relying on amsmath quite heavily, so it would be nice to find a fix. Unfortunately, I have almost no experience in working with fonts in LaTeX myself.

Below is a working example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{fourier}

\DeclareSymbolFont{mdsymbols}     {OMS}{mdput}{m}{n}
\DeclareSymbolFont{mdlargesymbols}{OMX}{mdput}{m}{n}
\DeclareMathDelimiter{\lbrace}
   {\mathopen}{mdsymbols}{"66}{mdlargesymbols}{"08}
\DeclareMathDelimiter{\rbrace}
   {\mathclose}{mdsymbols}{"67}{mdlargesymbols}{"09}
\renewcommand{\textbraceleft}{%
  {\fontfamily{mdput}\fontencoding{OMS}\selectfont\char"66}}
\renewcommand{\textbraceright}{%
  {\fontfamily{mdput}\fontencoding{OMS}\selectfont\char"67}}

\begin{document}
$\{\bigl\{\Bigl\{\biggl\{\Biggl\{$
\end{document}
Repin
  • 153
  • Welcome to TeX.sx! A tip: You can use backticks ``` to mark your inline code as I did in my edit. – Torbjørn T. Nov 23 '11 at 13:03
  • Thank you for the answer, which was very useful. Now it seems that the curly brackets enlarged as \bigl\{...\bigr\} are the same size as the regular ones. The larger ones though, with \Bigl\{...\Bigr\}, have the size the \bigl-version should have had. Can you tell me the reason for this? Should I be worried, or just replace \bigl with \Bigl everywhere? – Repin Dec 03 '11 at 20:59
  • @Repin I've merged your accounts and converted you 'answer' to a comment – Joseph Wright Dec 03 '11 at 21:58

1 Answers1

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You can put the following in your preamble:

\DeclareSymbolFont{mdsymbols}     {OMS}{mdput}{m}{n}
\DeclareSymbolFont{mdlargesymbols}{OMX}{mdput}{m}{n}

\DeclareMathDelimiter{\lbrace}
   {\mathopen}{mdsymbols}{"66}{mdlargesymbols}{"08}
\DeclareMathDelimiter{\rbrace}
   {\mathclose}{mdsymbols}{"67}{mdlargesymbols}{"09}
\renewcommand{\textbraceleft}{%
  {\fontfamily{mdput}\fontencoding{OMS}\selectfont\char"66}}
\renewcommand{\textbraceright}{%
  {\fontfamily{mdput}\fontencoding{OMS}\selectfont\char"67}}

We define two new math symbol fonts from which we draw the braces.

Here's what results from $\{\bigl\{\Bigl\{\biggl\{\Biggl\{$:

enter image description here

Compare it with the original result simply with the fourier package:

enter image description here

When also amsmath is loaded, the result can be different, because the package redefines \big and family. For braces I get the correct result with

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\big}{\bBigg@{1.1}}
\renewcommand{\Big}{\bBigg@{1.415}}
\renewcommand{\bigg}{\bBigg@{2.1}}
\renewcommand{\Bigg}{\bBigg@{2.5}}
\makeatother

but this breaks the scaling of parentheses (which happens with fourier anyway).

egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • Thank you for your answer. I'm still a bit puzzled about the sizes of the bigger variants (see my comment above). Could you help me out? – Repin Dec 05 '11 at 01:33
  • @Repin I've added the result, it seems good to me. – egreg Dec 05 '11 at 11:21
  • It isn't working for me. I updated my question to show details. Seems to be the amsmath package that is confusing things. – Repin Dec 06 '11 at 01:22
  • Tried a bit further. Using mathdesign with the utopia option together with amsmath gives the correct sizes. I get the wrong sizes only when importing to fourier via the suggested method (and calling amsmath). Any ideas? – Repin Dec 08 '11 at 18:31
  • Thanks for the update. I see the problem now better. I guess I'll just have to try and fiddle a bit with the sizes. Luckily, I'm mostly using \big, and with your settings, both the normal and curly brackets look fine. – Repin Dec 09 '11 at 23:07