Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ Good PDF Font with small Caps

[InquisitorMo]

After having a huge amount of trouble caused by the "Baskerville" font (for reasons I still haven't elucidated, the font looks fine except in PDF readers, where the letters distort at regular viewing zooms).

As such I'm looking for a font which people believe shows up well in PDF and also has small caps capability, as I use these quite a bit in the CV, which is the document type I'm working on.

I'm using XeLaTeX, and Adobe PDF viewer XI (as I expect this will commonly be the one others use to view it).

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

[Johannes_B]

A good starting point is The LaTeX Font Catalogue. When working with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX you can also use system fonts.

But I told you all this before, so what exactly are you looking for? You already figured out, that this is a viewer problem.

Once again a MWE to test the looks of small Caps. Well, it's nearly the same as in the aforementioned thread.

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\usepackage{ifluatex}
\ifluatex
  \usepackage{fontspec}
%  \setmainfont{Baskerville}
  \setmainfont{Latin Modern Roman}
\else
  \usepackage{lmodern}
  \usepackage{librebaskerville}
  \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  \usepackage{selinput}
  \SelectInputMappings{}
\fi

\begin{document}
Straßencafé Geigenfiedler 

\blindtext

\textsc{\blindtext}
\end{document}

[InquisitorMo]

I suppose I worked through some of it after I posted this already.

My problem now as I've been testing different fonts is that I really prefer the Baskerville font (with the special small caps extra font I downloaded and then used as the 'small caps' variant), as the letter spacing in particular is what I want, as well as the italicized variant.

As you noted, for some reason, even in the PDF viewer, my document's 'baskerville' and the test samples that were posted do not display the same behavior. While the test sample is fine, the letters in my baskerville document continue to be distorted, and I have checked with many different people now with different viewer versions.

I believe the font I'm using is T1, and so I'm not sure why this would be happening - I am continuing to test this, or just find a font I think works as well that isn't baskerville.

[Johannes_B]

You are testing different fonts within the sample document above, do you?

[InquisitorMo]

I'm assuming the problem is that the Baskerville font I'm using is the system font rather than the one from the latex library.

--I'm a bit confused with the conditional framework you used, or why I would need that? I've also been using XeLatex for everything, as LuaLatex has never worked for me for some reason.

--I'm assuming that there's no way I can use the system font properly in PDF because I don't believe there's a T1 version for it; it's a bit different from the Latex Baskerville font.

--That said, despite your example working fine, I cannot get my actual document to compile with Baskerville (except the way I did it originally, which just calls the system font.

Code: Select all

\setmainfont{Baskerville}
\newfontfamily\smallcaps{Baskerville Small Caps SSi}

But when I use this to call the T1 Latex font, assuming there aren't any conflicts, it doesn't work, and I get two different errors depending on whether I capitalize the package name: Baskervald or baskervald

This gives the error: Command \sidefault already defined (so it's conflicting with something which defines the same commands, so far as I could gather?)

Code: Select all

\usepackage{baskervald}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

This gives the error: Baskervald.sty not found - so I infer from this that the name of the package is lowercase, though the system font name is called with a capital letter (or it doesn't work... bit confusing)

Code: Select all

\usepackage{Baskervald}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

***So basically, I want to put this document into the T1 of Baskerville (not my system font, unless, as inquired, I CAN get that FONT as T1, but I haven't seen it).

I assume I'm just doing something simple wrong, as I can READILY get other fonts in the Latex library to work fine, such as Times, which compiles without issue - the font just isn't quite to my liking.

[Johannes_B]

When you compile with lualatex or xelatex, you do not have to specify the font encoding. Those engines do that for you. You also load the fonts with the set****font{<name>} interface provided by fontspec, at least in genereal. OpenTypeFonts differ from the normal fonts accessed by pdflatex.

I did some research, there aren't many Baskerville clones with small caps support. Have a look at typophile to see some alternatives. There is also Open Baskerville, but it seems to be far from (really) usable.

Where is your SC-variant of Baskerville coming from?

Have you ever heard of Linux Libertine? I think thats a nice font.

The conditional is just for the testing and to show, that you don't have to (must not) load package fontenc, nor inputenc.

[InquisitorMo]

Ah, ok.

I just downloaded an OpenType font from a website called "Baskerville Small Caps ssi," which I suspect isn't really a good rendition, was wasn't noticeable on my document.

While I'm still unsure why exactly "Baskerville" isn't working but several other fonts are, I'm wondering now whether it's because I don't have Baskervald installed (though I thought MikTek includes it automatically). Also, as you've noted, without a small-caps variant, I will still need to use some kind of NON-T1 font for the small caps, which I require - though they do not seem distorted in pdf readers for whatever reason, just the regular font.

I can also confirm that when using the T1 Times font, the document looks GREAT in PDF readers, so it's just a matter now of perhaps trying to get Baskerville/Baskervald T1 to compile, and then substituting the small caps as I've already done.

I need to check whether I have baskervald at all, as I remember getting an error saying "baskervald.sty not found".

[InquisitorMo]

Sorry, and yes I know of LinuxLibertine - I'm definitely looking for a serif font though.

Also, I'm a bit confused after all this what the utility of being able to use system fonts is (as I did originally, and was really excited about), if indeed, they don't render correctly into PDF, as I've experienced?

It seems very unfortunate (and I assume is Adobe's fault), that the entire usefulness of Latex completely hinges on the quality of Adobe Reader's ability to display it?

Unless, there's some other format I could use instead? (Though I suspect PDF is the 'best' format in terms of wide use, etc.)

I also assume that most people using Latex simply use one of the Latex library fonts, which seem to render well (though even then, not quite as brilliantly for some reason, as they do in TexShop's compiled PDF previewer, which I don't understand).