Improved TeX font metrics and virtual fonts for Utopia

The font metrics and virtual fonts for the typeface family Utopia, that are shipped with LaTeX as part of the PSNFSS collection, exhibit a number of deficiencies (and are marked as obsolete, anyway):

• The inter-word space is way too small.
• The smallcaps are "faked"; when you are used to the excellent typographical quality of the Computer Modern typefaces, you will notice their poor quality. Real smallcaps are available in the commercial Utopia Expert fonts; however, installing these would not change anything, because the use of the faked smallcaps is hardwired in the virtual fonts.
• The fonts appear much larger than most others, when used at the same nominal size. This may lead to problems as far as blending with other typefaces and use of the standard document classes are concerned.
• Poor kerning.
• Ugly Polish diacritics.
• Lack of necessary letterspacing at small font sizes.

With respect to compatibility, changing the behavior of the existing font family put was not a viable option, so I have provided a set of font definition files, metrics and VFs to implement two additional font families for LaTeX, putx and putj. In conjunction with the related macros and font definition files, they constitute an attempt to fix the above-mentioned deficiencies.

Note that you can profit from the improvements even without installing of the commercial Utopia Expert fonts:: As long as you do not make use of smallcaps or oldstyle figures, the expert fonts are not actually required.

This collection can be regarded as an alternative to the text fonts of the "Fourier" bundle. Note that both collections can be safely installed in parallel! The main advantage of the present collection over the Fourier text fonts are:

• Using smallcaps and oldstyle figures requires only the Utopia Expert fonts; the redundant UtopiaSC/OsF fonts need not to be purchased additionally.
• Improved kerning tables.
• Improved readability at sizes of 10pt and below.
• Decent Polish diacritics.

To typeset math, the text font families putx and putj can be used together with the free math fonts of the above-mentioned "Fourier" collection. A suitable macro package is provided. The present version of this package requires at least version 1.4 (2005-01-01) of the "Fourier" collection and supports the use of the new bold math fonts.

Download:

• readme.1st : installation instructions and general information
• putx.zip : metrics, FD files, virtual fonts and font map files 
• putx.map : font mapping file for use with dvips and pdfTeX
• putx.ali : font mapping file for VTeX/Free

The collection is approriate for any TDS-compliant TeX system, such as teTeX, fpTeX, MikTeX, VTeX/Free, emTeX/TDS. It does, of course, not include the Utopia Expert fonts, which can be purchased from Adobe or Linotype.

Walter Schmidt   <w.a,schmidt@gmx.net>   2005-03-05