[Tex/LaTex] How to typeset some text including math content in sans serif

fontsmath-modesans-serif

I have a blurb of text in an external macro \SomeText, which I want to typeset in sans serif. However, \sffamily\SomeText does not change the math font and \sffamily\mathsf{\SomeText} does not work, as I am not in math mode.

So how can I typeset material in sans serif, whether it does or does not include math stuff?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\newcommand{\SomeText}{This is some ($words \geq 5$) Text with math stuff in it: $a^2+b^2=c^2$}

\begin{document}
  \begin{description}
    \item[Roman:] \SomeText
    \item[Sans:] {\sffamily \SomeText \\ (however, the math is still Roman)}

%    LaTeX Error: \mathsf allowed only in math mode
%    \item[AllSans:] {\sffamily\mathsf \SomeText}
  \end{description}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Okay, I found a solution in embarrassingly short time after posting the question: The sansmath package provides the \sansmath command (and several environments) for this purpose.

I am yet curious to know if there is some solution that does not depend on an additional package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{sansmath}
\newcommand{\SomeText}{This is some text with math stuff in it. 
    $x>5$, $a^2+b^2=c^2$}

\begin{document}
  \begin{description}
    \item[Roman:] \SomeText
    \item[Sans:] {\sffamily \SomeText \\ However, the math is still Roman.}
    \item[AllSans:] {\sffamily\sansmath \SomeText}
  \end{description}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Equivalent of \mathup for upright text in math mode

I guess what you are seeing is the following when you use \mathrm with a serif font:

Sample output

\documentclass{beamer}

\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
  \( x y \mathrm{x} \text{\textup{x}}\)
\end{frame}

\end{document}

There are two ways to fix this: one fairly drastic option is to put

\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{cmss}

but this may feed through to places you are not expecting. An alternative is to replace the two relevant definitions from beamerbasefont.sty by

\AtBeginDocument{%
  \SetMathAlphabet{\mathrm}{normal}{\encodingdefault}{cmss}{\mddefault}{n}
  \SetMathAlphabet{\mathrm}{bold}{\encodingdefault}{cmss}{\bfdefault}{n}}

in your preamble. In the beamer style file {cmss} is {\rmdefault}.

Applied to the above example, either method gives you:

Second sample

[Tex/LaTex] How to combine another sans-serif math font with helvet for text

Update, use `sansmathfonts` instead of `sansmath`

A year later, I finally found a combination of text and math font for a helvet-based document. Source: Egreg's answer to my question about arev's strange placement of subscripts.

Result

New code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage{sansmathfonts}
%\usepackage[scaled=0.86]{beramono} % for code listings
\usepackage[scaled=0.95]{helvet}
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[math]{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\blindmathpaper
\end{document}

Old (`helvet` + `arev`)

I should have read the survey link I provided more carefully. The author was so nice to not only provide the comparison as pdf, but also as tex for each font combination. He explains how to combine the math font of Arev with text font of Heros, which is a Helvetica clone. So with a slight change from tgheros to helvet, my working example becomes:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{arev} % sans-serif math font
\usepackage{helvet} % sans-serif text font
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage[math]{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\blindmathpaper
\end{document}