MathGroup Archive 2011

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Search the Archive

Re: Changing fonts of greek letters

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg116325] Re: Changing fonts of greek letters
  • From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
  • Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:14:17 -0500 (EST)

This is the way the system is designed.  Mathematica includes fonts for Greek 
characters so that math will have a consistent and acceptable appearance across 
platforms, regardless of font availability.  Mathematica uses Unicode to 
represent the Greek characters and, somewhat unfortunately, the Unicode standard 
makes no distinction between Greek characters for mathematical use and Greek 
characters for use as part of the Greek language (except for epsilon).

To deal with this Unicode limitation, Mathematica has a different behavior when 
running on Greek systems.  On those systems, it displays Greek in the native 
fonts, and never using our mathematical fonts...which can make the display of 
math look crummy, but it makes a significant improvement in the display of 
native Greek text, as you can imagine.

Sincerely,

John Fultz
jfultz at wolfram.com
User Interface Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.


On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:21:25 -0500 (EST), Emerson River wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> Using Mathematica 7.0 I can't change the font od greek characters. Try the
> following example:
>
> {Style[{FromCharacterCode[16^^0046, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^0061, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^03BE, "UTF8"]}, FontFamily -> "Cambria", 32],
> Style[{FromCharacterCode[16^^0046, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^0061, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^03BE, "UTF8"]},
> FontFamily -> "Linux Libertine O", 32],
> Style[{FromCharacterCode[16^^0046, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^0061, "UTF8"],
> FromCharacterCode[16^^03BE, "UTF8"]}, FontFamily -> "Arial", 32]
> }
>
> One should see that the font of the latin characters changes, but not the
> font of the greek characters.
> The same issue is described
> here<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-
> sys.math.mathematica/browse_thread/thread/b635ce16c0363482/99e70e2a9c93fe6e?
> lnk=raot&fwc=1>




  • Prev by Date: Re: Apply a rule to an expression only once
  • Next by Date: Re: Another point about Mathematica 8.0
  • Previous by thread: Changing fonts of greek letters
  • Next by thread: Regarding messages with uninformative subject lines