Top 20 Latex Fonts
Following the awesome Top 10 LaTeX Fonts by Jaap Joris Vens, this page includes pages using 20 LaTeX fonts that I evaluated for Version 3.0 of the 1d6 roleplaying system.
Each paragraph1 showcases a different font family and how I activated it. All fonts2 are free and open source and available via texlive. The sources are basesetup.tex and template.org. The pages are converted to PNGs with Ghostscript (see the howto at the end of this page).
Using this page: click through the fonts a few times and stop at the one which best matches the feeling you want.
If you find mistakes on this page, like broken font rendering, please tell me, so I can fix them.
Sans Serif
Nimbus Sans (Helvetica)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-helvet.pdf
\usepackage{helvet} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Gothic (URW for Avant Garde)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-avant.pdf
\usepackage{avant} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Berasans
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-berasans.pdf
\usepackage[scaled=0.88]{berasans}% package has a handy scaling option \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Libris
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-libris.pdf
\usepackage{libris} % a nice, almost handwritten calligraphic look \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Biolinum
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-biolinum.pdf
\usepackage{biolinum} % included with the {Libertine} font package \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Iwona
Paratype
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-paratype.pdf
\usepackage{paratype}\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Heros
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-tgheros.pdf
\usepackage{tgheros}\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Lato
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-lato.pdf
\usepackage{lato} \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Cabin
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-cabin.pdf
\usepackage{cabin} \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
Serif
Latin Modern
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-latin-modern.pdf
\usepackage{lmodern} % monospace font \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \renewcommand{\ttdefault}{lmtt} % MONO Latin Modern Font % T1 encoding of cmtt font style \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{lmr} % SERIF Latin Modern Font % T1 encoding of cmr font style \renewcommand{\sfdefault}{lmss} % SANS Latin Modern Font % T1 encoding of cmss font style
Kepler with ligatures
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-kepler.pdf
The ligatures like the lines above st are there because I activated old style.
\usepackage[oldstyle,oldstylemath]{kpfonts}
- Kp-Fonts von Christophe Caignaert (2018) des Johannes Kepler project (unter GPL v2 or later mit Font Exception).
Baskerville / Baskervald
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-baskervald.pdf
- Baskervald ADF von Arkandis Digital Foundry (ADF)(unter GPL v2 or later mit Font Exception) und Heros von Jackowski and Janusz M. Nowacki.
The ligatures like the lines above st are there because I activated old style.
% baskervald with swash: more ligatures, % and osf: old style (tosf) in text, tlf in math, \usepackage[swash,osf,sups,scaled=1.02]{Baskervaldx} % math italic letters from Baskervaldx \usepackage[baskervaldx,cmintegrals,bigdelims,vvarbb]{newtxmath} \usepackage[cal=boondoxo]{mathalfa} % mathcal from STIX, unslanted a bit
Bitstream Charter
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-charter.pdf
\usepackage{charter} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution
Bitstream Charter extended
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-xcharter.pdf
\usepackage{XCharter} % Bitstream's Charter % extended with many style varieties
Chancery (by URW)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-chancery.pdf
\usepackage{chancery} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution
Beraserif
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-beraserif.pdf
\usepackage[scaled=0.88]{beraserif} % package has a handy scaling option
Fourier Century Schoolbook
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-fouriernc.pdf
\usepackage{fouriernc} % Century Schoolbook % compact and lighter than New Century Schoolbook
(New) Century Schoolbook
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-newcent.pdf
\usepackage{newcent} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution
Schola (TeX Gyre Schoolbook)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-tgschola.pdf
\usepackage{tgschola} % TeX Gyre Schola, % New Century Schoolbook with many font style varieties
Nimbus Roman (URW Times)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-times.pdf
\usepackage{mathptmx,txfonts} % Times % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{txr} \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\rmdefault}
Tex Gyre Termes (Times)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-tgtermes.pdf
\usepackage{tgtermes} % TeX Gyre Termes, % Times with many font style varieties
Bookman (by URW)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-bookman.pdf
\usepackage{bookman} % PSNFSS Font, in every TeX distribution
Bonum (Tex Gyre Bookman)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-tgbonum.pdf
\usepackage{tgbonum} % TeX Gyre Bonum, % Bookman with many font style varieties
Palladio (Palatino)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-palatino.pdf
\usepackage{newpxtext,newpxmath} % Palatino
Pagella (Tex Gyre for Palatino)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-tgpagella.pdf
\usepackage{tgpagella} % TeX Gyre Pagella, % a Palatino with many font style varieties
Fourier (Utopia)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-utopia.pdf
\usepackage{fourier} % Utopia, package {utopia} is obsolete
Cardo (Bembo/Garamond)
https://www.draketo.de/anderes/ews-template-font-garamond.pdf
% A Garamond Font (Bembo) with many font styles \usepackage{fbb}
HowTo
hg clone https://hg.sr.ht/~arnebab/ews cd ews/Hauptdokument/ews30 FONTNAME=fontname # (edit basesetup.tex to uncomment the FONTNAME to try) make template.pdf for page in 3 4; do gs -sDocumentUUID="ews" -sInstanceUUID="ews" -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \ -sDEVICE=png16m -r600 -dDownScaleFactor=1 \ -dFirstPage=$page -dLastPage=$page \ -sOutputFile="ews-template-font-${FONTNAME}-${page}.png" "template.pdf" done
sources are basesetup.tex and template.org.
The images are from the awesome Trudy Wenzel. Thank you!
You can find her and her cyberfairies on synticfaye.com.
Footnotes:
except for this one, which is rendered by your browser, and for the code example, because I did not want to edit the template file, only the setup.
If you want to investigate more font previews, without the pre-filtering for legibility done here, the LaTeX Font Catalogue can be a good start. To get to this list, I first checked different font preview lists online, but I missed a pre-filtering for sufficient legibility. There are many fonts online, but most of them are not nice to read in longer-form text (at least not to the standard set by fonts sponsored by Adobe or Microsoft). If you find fonts you like here, please doublecheck your impression with your own page layout. That might change the fonts legibility.