10.10 Historical and other fonts
The fonts that we are going to showcase in this section are a mixed bunch that for one or another reason did not fit well into the classification that we used above. A few are historically before the periods covered, e.g., Cinzel and Marcellus that are based on 1st century roman inscriptions. The Blackletter shapes that we cover briefly at the end were the first fonts used as movable type and thus represent the period before the Humanist fonts took over. Because they are useful only in special circumstances, we cover them here.
On the other side of the spectrum are the Chancery and handwriting fonts that are in some sense the predecessors of what we nowadays call the italic shape because the glyph forms were originally developed in the Vatican in the 15th century based on the Humanist minuscule of that time.
Two of the families inspired by chancery handwriting, Almendra and Antykwa Torunska, are explicitly intended for body text (though they work nicely in display ´ sizes too). Due to their stronger personality, they are suitable only in a few scenarios, which is why they are also placed in this section.
The actual fonts that we exhibit here are — with one exception — all contemporary and have been designed in the last or even in this century. The exceptions are the Fell types, which are digitalized versions of the 17th century originals, charmingly showing all the imperfections of the original type.
10.10.1 Cinzel
The classical proportions of the Cinzel fonts are inspired by 1st century roman inscriptions. Designed by Natanael Gama, the fonts are available in three different weights (but naturally, without italics, which is an invention of the 15th century).
LaTEX support for all engines is provided through the package cinzel by Bob Tennent. If the option default is given, is changed to select the family. In any case, the font is made available through the commands and or the declarations and .
10.10.2 Marcellus
Like Cinzel, the Marcellus fonts by Brian J. Bonislawsky are also inspired by classical roman inscriptions. The small capitals are well suited for display text, while the regular version lends itself to a wider range of usage having both capitals and lowercase letters. Note, though, that this family is offered only in regular weight and does not provide any italics.
LaTEX support for all engines is provided through the package marcellus by Bob Tennent with the option scaled providing a scale factor.
10.10.3 The Fell Types
The so-called Fell Types, which are of Dutch origin, were in use in the 17th century at the Oxford University Press. They have been procured by Dr. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church, who also collected an impressive number of ornamental flower specimen. The fonts have been digitalized by Igino Marini,1 and LaTEX support for all engines is available through the package imfellEnglish by Bob Tennent. The sample shows the fonts at their nominal font size of 13.5pt.
10.10.4 Almendra
The Almendra family, designed by Ana Sanfelippo, is a typeface inspired by chancery and gothic handwriting. It was exhibited at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Diseño in 2010 and was part of the German editorial project Typodarium 2012. The font is intended for body text but also works nicely in display sizes. One of its unusual features is that its italics are upright.
LaTEX support for all engines is provided through the package almendra by Bob Tennent. With the option scaled you can provide a scale factor.
10.10.5 Antykwa Torunska
Antykwa Torunska, which means “Antiqua of Toru ´ n”, was designed by Zygfryd ´ Gardzielewski, a typographer from the city of Torun´1 (Thorn), Poland. Some of its characteristic features are the widening of its stems towards the top and the wave-like form of some of the horizontal and diagonal lines as well as the form of its serifs. It was first cut in metal in 1960 in Warsaw and digitalized in 2005 by Janusz Marian
10.10.6 Lucida Casual, Calligraphy, and Handwriting
In the Lucida set of fonts sold by TUG there are three typefaces that are inspired in varying degrees by handwriting. You can find their NFSS 10.11 on page 22 together with those of other Lucida families. Lucida Casual supports upright and italic shapes; the others only italics as is typical for handwritten fonts.
10.10.7 Zapf Chancery (TEX Gyre Chorus)
Zapf Chancery is another and quite famous contemporary script based on chancery handwriting, as developed during the Italian Renaissance for use by the scribes in the papal offices. Highly legible, it can be usefully applied for short texts and applications like invitations and awards.
TEX Gyre Chorus shown here is based on the URW Chancery L Medium Italic version of the font (which is set up by the TEX Gyre tgchorus package). Note that this font is available only in an italic shape, which is why the sample text does not show any bold or small capitals.
10.10.8 Miama Nueva
This typeface, designed by Linus Romer, also mimics handwriting and offers a large glyph set that supports the Latin, polytonic Greek, and Cyrillic scripts. The miama package for the pdfTEX engine supports the option scaled to provide a scaling factor and offers the command and the declaration to select the font— document font defaults are not changed. Thus, if you want to typeset a whole document in this hand, use , and if you cannot stop talking about TEX or LaTEX in your invitation letter, then and provide you with a way, as the standard commands do not work well in this font.
10.10.9 Lucida Blackletter
The Lucida set of fonts as sold by TUG also contains a blackletter font, which is primarily meant to be used in math (at least when using pdfTEX) and not in text as we do here. See Section 10.2.10 on page 25 for a discussion of why.
10.10.10 Blackletter — Yannis Gothic, Schwabacher, and Fraktur
There exists a set of beautiful fonts for typesetting in Gothic, Schwabacher, and Fraktur designed in METAFONT after traditional typefaces by Yannis Haralambous [66]. The collection also contains a font with baroque initials. These days Type 1 versions of the fonts are available as well that are automatically used.
LaTEX support for all engines is provided through the yfonts package written by Walter Schmidt (1960–2021). This package internally defines some local encodings (i.e., even on Unicode engines it does not use fontenc) that reflect the special features found in the fonts and integrates them fully with LaTEX’s font management.
The commands , , and switch to Gothic, Schwabacher, and Fraktur, respectively. The corresponding commands with one argument are , , and . If one wants to typeset a whole document in such a typeface, the corresponding command should be used directly after \begin{document}. Because of the nonstandard encodings of the fonts, redefining the document defaults (e.g., ) is not possible. In addition to the font switches, the usual .. commands for typesetting short fragments are provided.