[OS X TeX] Lucida Fonts - how to invoke use once installed

[Bruno Voisin]

> I just converted and installed the Lucida Bright fonts (expert, math,
> everything) that I used to use with Textures (if anyone has trouble, I can
> now provide excruciating detail on how to do it). It all works wonderfully,
> but I only had to use:
> 
> \usepackage[expert]{lucidabr}
> 
> to get what I wanted. I include the "expert" option to get bold math fonts.
> 
> [1] Do I need to specify the encoding?
> 
> [2] What does the "bm" package do that I can't get with "amsmath"?


[1] I don't think the encoding needs to be specified, this means you 
will use OT1 metrics like:

/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/bh/lubright/hlhr7t.tfm

However if you're concerned, like me, by using features of 8-bit fonts 
(like hyphenation of words with accented characters, as allowed by the 
babel package), then yes, you need to specify the encoding, either as:

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[expert]{lucidabr}

which means you will use T1 metrics like:

/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/bh/lubright/hlhr8t.tfm

or as:

\usepackage[LY1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[expert]{lucidabr}

which means you will use LY1 metrics like:

/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/yandy/lubright/lbr.tfm

I tend to favour the third solution, since this means using the original 
metrics from the designers of the fonts themselves, and in my experience 
T1 metrics for PostScript fonts tend to produce overcrowded lines with 
too many hyphenations (at least, more than with LY1 metrics). In French 
we tend to get more hyphenations than in English, I think.


[2] I didn't compare the relative performances of \bm from the bm 
package and \boldsymbol from the amsmath package, but every source I saw 
which mentions them (including compuscript instructions from journal 
editors) says more or less that \boldsymbol is deprecated and \bm its 
"official" replacement. One reason I think is that the bm package is now 
part of official LaTeX.


> In addition, I noticed that when I use:
> 
> \documentclass[12pt]{article}
> \usepackage[expert]{lucidabr}
> \usepackage{amsmath}
> 
> I get different versions of the AMS symbols when compared to using:
> 
> \documentclass[12pt]{article}
> \usepackage[expert]{lucidabr}
> \usepackage{amsmath}
> \usepackage{amssymb}
> 
> It appears that in the former, I am getting the Lucida versions and in the
> latter the Computer Modern/AMS versions. Is this the proper behavior?
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/yandy/lubright/lbr.tfm

The lucidabr package defines the control sequences for AMS symbols to 
use replacement characters from the Lucida Math fonts, while the amssymb 
package defines these sequences to use the original characters from the 
AMS Math fonts, so yes I guess that the last loaded package has 
precedence over the first.

I have used Lucida fonts for about a year now with TeXShop, and it's 
really cool!

Bruno Voisin


-----------------------------------------------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"unsubscribe macosx-tex" (no quotes) in the body.
For additional HELP, send email to <info at email.esm.psu.edu> with
"help" (no quotes) in the body.
-----------------------------------------------------------------