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Does Mathematica support the installation of non-Wolfram fonts for math symbols?

Examples of other math symbol fonts include the recently released STIX fonts, Microsoft's Cambria font, the Math Times font used under Latex, etc.

StackExchanger
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1 Answers1

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I have not been able to find a way to substitute math-specific characters like Greek letters, integration operators, etc. It is, however, possible to substitute letters from normal text fonts by selecting the relevant bit of of the notebook (including 2D typesetting in text cells separately, it seems), and setting the desired font in the Option Inspector.

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This shows how the difference between a typeset expression in Adobe Caslon Pro and the default in Times. The x is clearly different in the two fonts.

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If you set the OperatorSubstitution option in the inspector to False, you will also get characters such as +,- etc in the text font rather than Mathematica's custom fonts.

The question is whether it would make sense to use other math fonts for what remains. Obviously it would be nice to use matching Greek letters if they were available. But given that it cannot be guaranteed that even an extensive math font like STIX has all the characters available in Mathematica (think esc-wolf-esc), I can understand why this might not be customisable. In addition, I doubt if most people could tell the difference between the Mathematica Times-based fonts, the LaTeX Times fonts and the STIX fonts, which are also pretty much like Times. The Microsoft Cambria fonts do look different, but aren't yet widely used in technical publishing.

Verbeia
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  • All very good points ... especially the OpSub option for improving visual integration with a non-Wolfram font. After looking in the Windows control panel for fonts, I noticed several files that contain the various math symbols used by Mma. I am now wondering if similar font files have been created for other non-Wolfram math fonts (which could be placed into this folder as a drop-in replacement) or if a tool exists for producing these files from another font format. Perhaps Wolfram will provide us with this in a future release of Mma, or in a resurrection of the now defunct Publicon tool. – StackExchanger Oct 16 '11 at 06:33
  • @StackExchanger - I'm not sure what you mean by dropping in fonts - do you mean into a folder specifically relating to Mathematica? I have to say, even getting the letters, numbers and operators to show as a custom font is much easier in Mma than in LaTeX: this page reflects hours and hours of work! http://www.verbeia.com/tex/ – Verbeia Oct 16 '11 at 07:14
  • In Windows, Mathematica's math symbols are broken up into separate font files (called Mathematica1,... in the Windows control panel). "Dropping in" another set of font files representing the same symbols (and using the same encoding of course) would probably require overwriting these files since I don't believe there is a mechanism from within Mma to select a different font for the math symbols. BTW, nice work on the website ... font choice for the math is still a key area that distinguishes LaTeX from Mma for desktop publishing. – StackExchanger Oct 17 '11 at 05:57