Re: [SL] choosing fonts on invoice

[Stroller <lin...@my...>]

On 17 Nov 2006, at 03:24, William Hamilton wrote:

> How can I choose which font appears in the heading of LaTeX  
> invoices?  A
> client would like to use their corporate standard "Century Gothic"  
> in the
> letterhead.

The best answer I can give you is to take a look at The LaTeX Font  
Catalogue [1] - I don't know whether there are any fonts in the CTAN  
repository [2] that aren't listed there.

I have tried converting TrueType fonts for use with LaTeX, but the  
results were VERY unsatisfactory - I am sure I followed the  
instructions (I found several guides on the web) to the letter, but I  
think the problem is that the kerning / hinting / font-whatever isn't  
converted properly.

AFAICT LaTeX is very successful at "printing beautiful documents" if  
you use a font that has been designed (or at least well-prepared by  
hand) for it. I don't know much about font names & foundries, but I  
suspect you might find that the exact font your customer use is not  
already available in a TeX format. From the sounds of it you will do  
well with Avantgarde, however. The Font Catalogue says that "the font  
that is actually provided is URW Gothic (An Avantgarde clone)" and  
when I look Century Gothic up on Wikipedia [4] I find that it "takes  
inspiration from Sol Hess's Twentieth Century typeface drawn ... as a  
version of the successful Futura typeface [but] is more closely  
related to Avant Garde Gothic".

IE: I don't think you should tell your customer that you're not using  
"their font", because you are likely to be able to choose a font  
indistinguishable.

If you choose AvantGarde then I think you'll find that it's part of  
the Adobe core fonts installed with your LaTeX system. Otherwise try  
the avantgar package at CTAN [5]. So you should just be able to  
compile & view avantgarde.tex [6] on your system & Bob's your  
mother's brother.

The Font Catalogue always gives the package name for a font in its  
page's "usage" section. I think you'll nearly always be able to find  
that package at CTAN. I find installing packages from CTAN non- 
intuitive, and it's annoying that my distro's package-manager  
includes some CTAN packages, but not many others. Consequently I used  
my distro's package-manager to install the MiKTeX package manager (on  
Gentoo: `emerge mpm`); thereafter one can search for packages using  
`mpm --list | grep packagename`; `mpm --install packagename`.

You then have to tell various utilities where to find the new  
font's .map files. I could write a deal more about this, but it would  
take me forever because I don't yet understand it all fully myself -  
my two pieces of advice are to look in your system's updmap.cfg (/var/ 
lib/texmf/web2c/updmap.cfg here) and run rubber on the "LATEX source  
of PDF sample" of your chosen font taken from the Font Catalogue.  
When dvipdf spits about missing fonts I run `updatedb && locate  
whatitsbitchingabout` and this usually allows me to find the .map  
file to add to updmap.cfg. You will need to run `updmap-sys` and  
`texhash` at some point.

I am a complete n00b at LaTeX, and only started using it for the  
first time perhpaps 10 days ago, specifically to layout invoices for  
SL. The .tex samples from the font catalogue will give you the basic  
usage, I think, enough to get you going on any particular font, and  
you should always compile this sample on your own system before  
integrating into your invoice.tex. This is what the comp.text.tex  
newsgroup calls a "minimal example" and when you have problems in  
LaTeX creating a minimal example seems to be particularly helpful.

I've been long enamoured of Verdana - I think it's a very clean font,  
and I like its spacing - but in LaTeX I'm finding Arev (a very  
closely related font) to be just as pleasing (certainly far more  
pleasing than was my attempt to convert Verdana to Type1!!). I also  
use the "hand-written" Augie on my invoices, using it to indicate to  
my customers the implications of <%itemnote%>  & <%notes%>; it too  
works VERY well. I would not be ashamed to send you one of my invoices.

The file you need to edit to change the design of your Postscript /  
PDF invoice is "/usr/local/sql-ledger/templates/Stroller/ 
invoice.tex". You mention that it is the font of the letterhead that  
you're interested in & by default invoice.tex uses an include or  
import statement to pull in letterhead.tex (in the same directory).

I'm sorry I can't direct you better, however (it is late and) I have  
tried to brainstorm all the things I wish I'd known a week or 10 days  
ago. The comp.text.tex newsgroup is very helpful.

Stroller.



[1] http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/
[2] http://www.ctan.org/
[3] http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/avantgarde/index.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic
[5] http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/psfonts/corelpak/avantgar/
[6] http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/avantgarde/avantgarde.tex
[7] http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/arev/index.html
[8] http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/augie/index.html