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I'm currently making an unofficial thesis/dissertation template for my college. There are some caveats to such an endeavour because of my college's formatting guidelines. One challenge is that the university requires the sans serif font family NewsGotT provided in the university's official channels. The fonts in TTF format are News Got T Regular, News Got T Bold and News Got T Light from URW++ font foundry. Note that there aren't oblique or italic font types among the listed. I managed to solve the problem in the easiest way possible[1].

  • To use those fonts, I already use fontspec. As some of you may now the package is compatible only with engines XeTeX and LuaLaTeX. I use the package's options like AutoFakeSlant and FakeSlant to add slant features.

  • XeTeX has issues, like micro typography limited to protrusion, among other things.

  • Also, LuaLaTeX has more micro typography features but still is limited compared with pdfLatEX.

Notwithstanding, I wonder if I could skip XeTeX and use pdfLaTeX instead and use microtype instead of doing it myself with fontspec[2]. Also, there's already a template and beginners will always have problems setting up XeTeX or LuaLaTeX locally. I experience that first-hand, even with a wiki with instructions.

I've been searching here for something like that, and I managed to find Installing TTF fonts in LaTeX. However, @christopher-oezbek's response has some replies from the user @cfr that got me thinking if I try to do it or not. The user @christopher-oezbek let some instructions as a link.

Note that the end-user cannot do this process himself. I have to do it myself, then add a relative path to be used in any environment, either in Overleaf or locally in MikTex, TexMaker, for instance. BTW, exclude ConTeXt.

So, the questions are:

  1. The process from @christopher-oezbek is feasible? (Tempus fugit)
  2. Should I stay with my current solution and find answers to use fontspec to improve font typography?

EDIT: I managed to do it. However, as mentioned in the comments it doesn't improve, given that it's the font quality itself. Sans Code Pro would be a great substitute, but my university doesn't have consideration for typography - or TeX. Better readability and appearance can be achieved all the same with LuaLaTeX with microtype. Notwithstanding, pdfLaTeX would be better, given that it is the default (many students have problems configuring the engine - if only they read the documentation ...).

[1]: Is this an XY Problem? Well, I did it in a painless way but didn't like the results. If the "painful" way gives me better results, I'll do it. Note that there are other ways like Font installation the shallow way.

[2]I will look for typographical advice in graphic designers' Stack Exchange for such a typeface. Also, if I choose XeTeX, I will question here how to optimize micro typography and font rendering readability and appearance with fontspec.

kokumajutsu
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  • you can not use truetype fonts with pdftex, you can (if you only need to cover european alphabets with limited needs for complicated truetype/opentype font shaping, convert some specific 256-character subset of the truetype font to a tfm font metric file to use with pdftex, but honestly it's a lot of work and I wouldn't are you sure the results of microtype with luatex are visibly worse in any real cases? – David Carlisle Dec 19 '21 at 23:20
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    note that your description of luatex is from 2013 so some very early beta, it's almost completely different by now – David Carlisle Dec 19 '21 at 23:24
  • @DavidCarlisle the font presentation is awful - the selected font doesn't help. But I did try LuaLaTeX with some results. Maybe tinkering with fontspec will give better readability. I do mention to the end-users to use LuaLaTeX. Some like it. Some are used to text processors, so font readability is irrelevant and the usage of the font is mandatory anyway. Thank you for the comment. – kokumajutsu Dec 19 '21 at 23:28
  • sorry I can not guess what you mean by font presentation in this context. Do you have any actual example where microtype is working better on a real text paragraph with pdftex than luatex? The final rendering of the font via luatex or via a conversion of a subset of the font to pdftex would be expected to be more or less identical so if it is "awful" wil luatex it will be "awful" with pdftex as well – David Carlisle Dec 19 '21 at 23:34
  • @DavidCarlisle it's really that. With LuaLaTeX the text is more readable but in the end, it's really the font rendering - well the font overall. There are substitutes like Source Code Pro, but the x-height gives it away. The university may pick with that. That it is then. I can't upvote your reply because I don't have enough reputation. Thank you again. – kokumajutsu Dec 19 '21 at 23:53
  • sorry I can not see any connection between that comment and your question. You are asking about converting the font to a 256 character tfm subset to use with pdftex instead of luatex, I would expect the font rendering to be identical but much harder to set up for the pdftex version. If you provided an example that had different rendering from luatex and pdftex and asked about the difference, someone could answer, but as it is, I do not think the question is clear enough to answer, sorry. – David Carlisle Dec 20 '21 at 00:00
  • in terms of microtype features, the difference between pdftex and luatex isn't as relevant as you make it sound. The features that are unavailable with luatex aren't that useful anyway. So I would advise to not go through the hassle of ttf font installation, and just use luatex. – Robert Dec 20 '21 at 00:31
  • @DavidCarlisle fair point. For the record, I'm still too ignorant on the topic. so I apologise for not being clear enough. One of the issues that I have with this font face is that the characters don't have enough spacing within each character box - at least for my own readability. Others did complain about the font. So, what I noticed is that with LuaLateX micro typography - being the features available font expansion and tracking - that that spacing adds more to the readability. – kokumajutsu Dec 20 '21 at 02:14
  • @DavidCarlisle That being said, the font look - its own design - doesn't help. But that has nothing to do with TeX. I misused the term "rendering". I apologise for that. In that regard, the rendering is very good. In some PDF readers with a 6400% zoom, the font rendering is still top-notch. However, the font face has embellishments like embossing the font to stand out from the page. That, on a screen, is hard to read. IMO, in general, sans serif are hard to read - depending on the font, of course. So, I was hoping that more microtype features would ease the readability. Maybe it's nonsense. – kokumajutsu Dec 20 '21 at 02:14

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