Thesis Font: Baskerville

Having asked the opinions of some of my colleagues and my family (who are now quite sure I'm obsessed about fonts :D ) about the font choices, I have finally made the font choice for my thesis - Baskerville (or its open equivalent, see a sample).

The font has a great history starting from its inception in 1757, which makes it perfect for the type of I'm going for - a Classic font. Wikipedia says:

Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville (1706-1775) in Birmingham, England. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the old style typefaces of William Caslon, and the modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot.

The Baskerville typeface is the result of John Baskerville's intent to improve upon the types of William Caslon. He increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular. These changes created a greater consistency in size and form.

Baskerville's typeface was the culmination of a larger series of experiments to improve legibility which also included paper making and ink manufacturing. The result was a typeface that reflected Baskerville's ideals of perfection, where he chose simplicity and quiet refinement. His background as a writing master is evident in the distinctive swash tail on the uppercase Q and in the cursive serifs in the Baskerville Italic. The refined feeling of the typeface makes it an excellent choice to convey dignity and tradition.

The open alternatives include Baskervald from ADF Fonts, GFS Baskerville from Greek Font Society (which is Greek only, still good from Physicists/Mathematicians though. Map it to the XeLaTeX Greek fonts), Open Baskerville (UFO Font only.... don't know how to get to Opentype yet) and Boisk Font which is inspired by Baskerville. I will add more as I find them.

Cheers
Shakes - L3mming

A Font Survey...

I have recently been looking into Opentype fonts that I can use with XeLaTeX and in my thesis.

The first nice option is Minion/Myriad Pro combination (see previous post), but the fonts aren't open... just free for personal use. Another nice option is the Cambria/Cambria Math but there might be licensing issues since they require MS Windows on the Machine.

The free fonts with equivalent metrics to common fonts are another good option. There's a list of other free fonts also. Matching maths used to be a problem with XeLaTeX, though now the mathspec package makes this easy by allowing one to mix and match symbols and fonts together with simple commands (as shown in previous post for MnSymbol).

OpenOffice has some nice fonts install too... FreeSerif and Nimbus. Charis and Gentium are also good but don't have Small caps support. Fontin has won alot of praise but didn't blow me away. Asana Math doesnt have Italics.

I'm not satisfied by the current choices for math symbols either. Latin Modern (XeLaTeX default) math is nice, MnSymbol is ok and Cambria is very nice but not free.... sigh... the search continues.

Cheers
Shakes - L3mming

EDIT: Some more great links to font list.

• Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs
• 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts
• 15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
• 20+ Beautiful Free Serif Fonts
  
• 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design

Great set of GNU fonts is availble at ADF Fonts too. I'm looking forward for the official Science Publication Fonts.

XeLaTeX Thesis Choices....

I have spent many hours trying to get my thesis looking just right using XeLaTeX. XeLaTeX is basically an extension to LaTeX based on XeTeX which uses unicode fonts. To me this means that I get to use any font thats freely available very easily. (Not sure whether you should convert from Word? See The Beauty of LaTeX article).

Anyhoo... some interesting facts. Most LaTeX packages can be used with XeLaTeX. In fact I converted to it by changing my template to:

%!TEX TS-program = xelatex
%!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,final,openright,twoside]{memoir}
\RequireXeTeX %Force XeTeX check

%XeLaTeX packages
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{fontspec} %Font package
\usepackage{xunicode}
\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase}

%Select fonts
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Minion Pro}
\setsansfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Myriad Pro}
\setmonofont{Courier Std}

\title{Your Title}
\author{Your Name}
\date{}

\begin{document}

\maketitle
\chapter{Title}

\section{Section Title}
Your text

\subsection{Subsection Title}
Your Text
\end{document}

You can then replace Minion Pro, Myriad Pro and Courier Std fonts (which come with Acrobat Reader 9) to any font installed on your system. You will need to compile the document using XeLaTeX rather than LaTeX. Simply reconfigure the latex button of your favourite editor. For those interested in getting MnSymbol package (i.e. the Minion Pro Maths package) to work with XeLaTeX, replace the Select Font part with:

\setprimaryfont{Minion Pro}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Minion Pro}
\setsansfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Myriad Pro}
\setmonofont{Courier Std}
\setmathsfont[Set=Greek,Uppercase=Italic,Lowercase=Italic]{Minion Pro}

Also replacing the XeLaTeX packages section to:

\usepackage[MnSymbol]{mathspec}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
%\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xunicode}
\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase}

You can control which font goes to which math font (rm, it etc.). See the mathspec package documentation for details. My experience of XeLaTeX has been quite enjoyable so far, hopefully it stays that way.

Some very useful packages that I've found for my thesis so far has been:

1. Memoir package.... a must really.
2. Natbib... another must
3. The rest in code form:
   

   %Call other packages
   \usepackage{varioref} %extends \pageref via \vref to automate things like "on the next page"
   \usepackage[xetex,breaklinks,plainpages=false,pdfpagelabels]{hyperref}
   \usepackage{memhfixc} %Allows Hyperref in Memoir
   \usepackage{graphicx}
   \usepackage[draft]{pdfpages}
   \usepackage{mdwmath} %Math alignment
   \usepackage{mdwtab}
   \usepackage[printonlyused,withpage]{acronym} %acronyms package
   
   % Notation package
   \usepackage[intoc]{nomencl}% Notation equation ref [refeq]
   \makenomenclature
   
   %Temporary Packages
   \usepackage[draft]{fixme} %Fix me margin notes and list
   

4. Others include ntheorem and svn-multi (if you intend on using Subversion for versioning)

Some things to consider though.... XeLaTeX is found in MikTeX 2.7 (Windows) and TeXLive 2008 (Windows/Linux). Ubuntu Linux only uses TeXLive 2007 which is too old and so you will need to install the latest version of TeXLive.... (New version will be out soon)... MikTeX 2.7 has just updated memoir so grab it now if you're on Windows.

Anyway, hope that helps anyone thinking of using XeLaTeX.

Cheers
Shakes - L3mming

EDIT: I have corrected the Minion Pro Math code.
EDIT: I have made the source for a basic but full thesis template is available on GitHub. Enjoy!