Difference between font packages 'charter' and 'mathdesign'

Andrzej Orłowski-Skoczyk

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Feb 7, 2010, 5:49:48 PM2/7/10

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Hello

I've been using Bitstream Charter font family a lot for readability on-screen, always by using 'charter' package:
\usepackage{charter}
Recently I read in http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/ that Charter BT should be used by calling 'mathdesign' package with 'charter' option:
\usepackage[bitstream-charter]{mathdesign}
I tried this, and there is a significant difference indeed: the second way of calling the font gives less pages, letters are visibly smaller and also \baselineskip seems to be reduced in size.

My questions:
Why do they differ? Do they call different font? Or only some options are different, but font is same?

Is any of the two ways to call 'Charter' better? For example, known for better spacing or having more glyphs?

I couldn't find much to answer this questions in the web. Thanks for any information.
--
aos

Dan

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Feb 8, 2010, 12:35:43 AM2/8/10

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On Feb 7, 4:49 pm, Andrzej Orłowski-Skoczyk <a...@mimuw.dump.edu.pl>
wrote:

> Hello
>
> I've been using Bitstream Charter font family a lot for readability on-screen, always by using 'charter' package:
> \usepackage{charter}

> Recently I read inhttp://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/that Charter BT should be used by calling 'mathdesign' package with 'charter' option:

> \usepackage[bitstream-charter]{mathdesign}
> I tried this, and there is a significant difference indeed: the second way of calling the font gives less pages, letters are visibly smaller and also \baselineskip seems to be reduced in size.
>
> My questions:
> Why do they differ? Do they call different font? Or only some options are different, but font is same?

By default mathdesign scales down some fonts. Try adding the option
scaled=false.

It is rather difficult to track down all the differences between the
mathdesign
package and the charter package, but the very fact that mathdesign
does
scale fonts (making a better match between sizes of different fonts)
already
suggests it is better. It also supplies math fonts designed to match
Charter
(rather than using the default CM fonts for math).

Dan

Ethan Duckworth

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Oct 21, 2014, 10:40:04 AM10/21/14

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I've just found that the mathdesign option supports the combination \bfseries\sffamily, whereas the plain charter package does not.

Bob Tennent

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Oct 21, 2014, 3:45:51 PM10/21/14

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Charter is a serifed font. Presumably mathdesign is adopting
cmss for sans serif text. To get the combination you want
with the charter package, use

\sffamily\fontseries{bx}\selectfont

or edit t1cmss.fd.

Bob T.

Robin Fairbairns

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Oct 22, 2014, 7:31:08 AM10/22/14

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Ethan Duckworth <educk...@loyola.edu> writes:

> I've just found that the mathdesign option supports the combination
> \bfseries\sffamily, whereas the plain charter package does not.

bfseriesthe charter package merely sets up roman and bold roman shapes
from the font. if you ask for \bfseries only, you get bold charter from
charter.sty...

... but there's no \sffamily (re)definition in charter.sty, so \sffamily
will pick up the computer modern sans (as set up in latex itself).

mathdesign tends to set up everything that the font can do.

one _could_ write a new charter.sty that does the same for charter that
mathdesign does, but what would be the point? -- if you want that, you
can use mathdesign.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge