[OS X TeX] Minion and Minion Pro

[Michael Sharpe]

On Apr 6, 2012, at 8:06 PM, Richard Seguin wrote:


> I've owned the original Postscript Type 1 version of Minion for many years. I also have the expert set that went along with it. (In fact I think it arrived on floppy disks!) I don't seem to have the metric files, but apparently they can be obtained here:
> 
> http://home.vr-web.de/was/fonts.html
> 

Walter Schmidt's site does have a full set of metrics for the old PostScript Minion fonts, but there is no package to load to text fonts only. You are reduced to writing, eg,

\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{pmnx} % lining figures, or
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{pmnj} % oldstyle figures

and there is no option to scale the fonts. You probably need to set 

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

as well.

> Can the original Minion work with the MinionPro package? (I'm guessing not.)
As you guessed, no. The latter depends on names that are specific to the MinionPro version.

> Does the original Minion work well with the MnSymbol set by other means? (I'm using the most current TeX Live.)
> 

Yes---in fact, any text font family can be used in connection with MnSymbol, but will lack a number of options.

> There doesn't seem to be an existing package written explicitly for the combination of the original Minion and the MnSymbol set, and I'm not sure if I have the knowledge and patience to code the equivalent functionality into a .tex file. One advantage of the original Minion/Minion Expert typeface that I currently own over the current Minion Pro typeface ($200) is that it has display fonts and some others that don't come with Minion Pro. You have to buy additional fonts from the Minion Pro "full family" or buy the entire full family for about $1000.
> 
> Has anyone recently attempted to to use the current Minion Pro set that comes with Adobe Acrobat Reader? See discussion here:
> 
Yes---it does work very well.

> http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/minionpro
> 
> I can't tell how old this information is.
> 

That information from 2007 is still the latest available---there have been no further developments to the package since then. The installation instructions are no longer correct for MacTeX 2011 though.

> I should add while I'm here that I've recently tried using MnSymbol with the Times package tgtermes, and it works very well, with only two problems: no one seems to know how to use blackboard bold in this environment, and greek characters, while acceptable, are a little light in weight in relation to the Times font.

You should be able to use any available blackboard bold with the package mathalfa, which supports most known blackboard bold fonts, assuming of course you haven't used up all 16 possible math families already.

If you want to play with font choices, take a look at

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3825336/TeX/index.html


where there's a file named TeXFontUtility.dmg. It has a discussion of many math font packages, including MnSymbol, and means of using them. It also has a fix for the current MinionPro otf font installation problems.

There are some problems with weights of fonts in the MnSymbol family---some are Computer Modern, uncomfortably light for on-screen viewing.

Michael


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