Baskerville Lowercase numbers & TIPA

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi all,

I'm typesetting a book in Adobe ITC Baskerville, installed with a set of
config files from Walter Schmidt (though he no longer supports them).
There's lot's of ipa in it for which I'm using TIPA. The IPA is
(probably) all to be in boldface. This is done by this little macro

\newcommand{\textipabf}[1]{%
\textipa{\textbf{#1}}%
}

So, I load the basker.sty package which just does:

\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{pnbx}

However, I'd like lower case numbers (aka oldstyle figures) so I made my
own package which does:

\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{pnbj}

This works great. However, now all my IPA is back in medium weight.

I must admit I don't fully understand NFSS2. Can someone point me to a
solution, or better still an explanation?

I can select the regular font:

\newcommand{\textipabf}[1]{%
{\fontfamily{pnbx}\selectfont
\textipa{\textbf{#1}}}%
}

and this works. This seems like more of a workaround than a solution
though. Actually, I'd really like to add an "osf" option to basker.sty
as in Walter's Adobe Garamond + Expert package, but I think I need to
fix this at the font level.

On a side note, I was told that the Adobe ITC Baskerville fonts are not
of great quality (mainly in non-English usage). Would I be better off
buying the Berthold ones? Our school does publish a good bit in
Baskerville and non-English text is not uncommon (mainly Irish).

Gavin

[Walter Schmidt]

Post by Gavin McCullagh
[...]
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{pnbj}
This works great. However, now all my IPA is back in medium weight.

The TIPA fonts are not defined for the font family pnbj,
so a fallback font is used, and the series and shape are
ignored.

Besides, tne TIPA fonts don't match Baskerville.
If you want to use the Times-style TIPA fonts together with
Baskerville, change you macro \textipabf so that the font
family ptm (Times) is selected locally:

\newcommand{\textipabf}[1]{%
{\fontfamily{ptm}\fontseries{b}\selectfont%
\textipa{#1}}}%

As a result, the boldface series (b) will not be ignored.

Post by Gavin McCullagh
I must admit I don't fully understand NFSS2.
Can someone point me to [...] an explanation?

The LaTeX Compnion, 2nd ed, chapter 7.

Post by Gavin McCullagh
\newcommand{\textipabf}[1]{%
{\fontfamily{pnbx}\selectfont
\textipa{\textbf{#1}}}%
}
and this works.

No, it doesn't. What you actually get is the fallback font,
i.e., a TIPA font with CM-Roman style.

Post by Gavin McCullagh
On a side note, I was told that the Adobe ITC Baskerville fonts are not
of great quality (mainly in non-English usage).

IIRC the kerning tables cover the English alphabet only.
(And the overhanging f makes Baskerville difficult to
use in German (*), but that's a question of design, rather
than quality.)

(*) That's why I did not put any more effort into supporting
this font family.

Post by Gavin McCullagh
Would I be better off buying the Berthold ones?
Our school does publish a good bit in
Baskerville and non-English text is not uncommon (mainly Irish).

Do you actually see any problems with the kerning of
"Irish" letters?


HTH
Walter

[Gavin McCullagh]

Post by Walter Schmidt
If you want to use the Times-style TIPA fonts together with
Baskerville, change you macro \textipabf so that the font
\newcommand{\textipabf}[1]{%
{\fontfamily{ptm}\fontseries{b}\selectfont%
\textipa{#1}}}%
As a result, the boldface series (b) will not be ignored.

Excellent, thanks.

Post by Walter Schmidt
The LaTeX Compnion, 2nd ed, chapter 7.

Fair enough :-)

Post by Walter Schmidt

Post by Gavin McCullagh
and this works.

No, it doesn't. What you actually get is the fallback font,
i.e., a TIPA font with CM-Roman style.

Sorry, works as in "restores the CM-Roman style boldface I had
previously." The above is far better though, thank you.

Post by Walter Schmidt
IIRC the kerning tables cover the English alphabet only.
(And the overhanging f makes Baskerville difficult to
use in German (*), but that's a question of design, rather
than quality.)
(*) That's why I did not put any more effort into supporting
this font family.
Do you actually see any problems with the kerning of
"Irish" letters?

I haven't seen any no, but I'll ask around (we haven't done that much
in Baskerville recently). The only thing is that there is a lot of
linguistic work done in the school which tends to draw examples from
many languages. If the Adobe version is not designed with, eg accented
characters in mind it might make sense for us to get the other on the
basis that we may come across the problem later (I'm only part-time
myself and might not be there).

Thanks very much for your help anyway,

Gavin