The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List

scheme [Ber01]; the Berry font-naming scheme is largely irrelevant for symbol fonts, which generally lack bold,italic, small-caps, slanted, and other such variants.mode setup;define pixels(em, cap, sb);define corrected pixels(o);%% Define a light bulb at the character position for “A”%% with width 1 / 2 em # , height cap # , and depth 1pt # .beginchar("A", 1 / 2 em # , cap # , 1pt # ); "A light bulb";pickup pencircle scaled 1 / 2 pt;%% Define the points we need.top z 1 = (w/2, h + o);rt z 2 = (w + sb + o − x 4 , y 4 );bot z 3 = (z 1 − (0, w − sb − o));lft z 4 = (sb − o, 1 / 2 [y 1 , y 3 ]);path bulb;bulb = z 1 . . z 2 . . z 3 . . z 4 . . cycle;% Target a given printer.% Convert to device-specific units.% Same, but add a device-specific fudge factor.% Use a pen with a small, circular tip.% z 1 is at the top of a circle.% z 2 is at the same height as z 4 but the opposite side.% z 3 is at the bottom of the circle.% z 4 is on the left of the circle.% Define a path for the bulb itself.% The bulb is a closed path.z 5 = point 2 − 1 / 3 of bulb; % z 5 lies on the bulb, a little to the right of z 3 .z 6 = (x 5 , 0); % z 6 is at the bottom, directly under z 5 .z 7 = (x 8 , 0); % z 7 is at the bottom, directly under z 8 .z 8 = point 2 + 1 / 3 of bulb; % z 8 lies on the bulb, a little to the left of z 3 .bot z 67 = ( 1 / 2 [x 6 , x 7 ], pen bot − o − 1 / 8 pt); % z 67 lies halfway between z 6 and z 7 but a jot lower.%% Draw the bulb and the base.draw bulb;draw z 5 - - z 6 . . z 67 . . z 7 - - z 8 ;% Draw the bulb proper.% Draw the base of the bulb.%% Display key positions and points to help us debug.makegrid(0, sb, w/2, w − sb)(0, −1pt, y 2 , h); % Label “interesting” x and y coordinates.penlabels(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 67, 7, 8);% Label control points for debugging.endchar;endFigure 3: Sample METAFONT size-independent file (lightbulb.mf)The code in Figures 2 and 3 is heavily commented and should demonstrate some of the basic conceptsbehind METAFONT usage: declaring variables, defining points, drawing lines and curves, and preparing todebug or fine-tune the output. Again, The METAFONTbook [Knu86b] is the definitive reference on META-FONT programming.METAFONT can produce “proofs” of fonts—large, labeled versions that showcase the logical structure ofeach character. In fact, proof mode is METAFONT’s default mode. To produce a proof of lightbulb10.mf,issue the following commands at the operating-system prompt:prompt> mf lightbulb10.mf ⇐ Produces lightbulb10.2602gfprompt> gftodvi lightbulb10.2602gf ⇐ Produces lightbulb10.dviYou can then view lightbulb10.dvi with any DVI viewer. The result is shown in Figure 4. Observe how thegrid defined with makegrid at the bottom of Figure 3 draws vertical lines at positions 0, sb, w/2, and w − sband horizontal lines at positions 0, −1pt, y 2 , and h. Similarly, observe how the penlabels command labels allof the important coordinates: z 1 , z 2 , . . . , z 8 and z 67 , which lightbulb.mf defines to lie between z 6 and z 7 .Most, if not all, TEX distributions include a Plain TEX file called testfont.tex which is useful for testingnew fonts in a variety of ways. One useful routine produces a table of all of the characters in the font:prompt> tex testfontThis is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)(/usr/share/texmf/tex/plain/base/testfont.texName of the font to test = lightbulb1097