[Tex/LaTex] Lowercase \mathcal

Question

The standard font used for \mathcal does not include any lowercase characters. The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbols List suggests redefining \mathcal to use Zapf Chancery. However I do not particularly like that font. For example the uppercase "I" is very hard do distinguish from the non-mathcal "I". Are there any good alternatives?

Answer 1

I'm a bit surprised that Will Robertson hasn't dropped by and mentioned the STIX fonts as these have the lowercase calligraphic (and lowercase blackboard bold) glyphs.

There doesn't yet seem to be a simple LaTeX package available mapping all the glyphs to particular commands, though. The stix package on CTAN at present seems to be just a copy of the fonts themselves (reorganised into correct texmf tree layout) but no style files as yet. I recall reading on the STIX website that LaTeX-related stuff was intended, but given how long it took the fonts to be released, I'm not holding my breath!

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As of 2018, this is now quite easy using luatex or xetex:

\documentclass{article}
%\url{https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/479/86}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Pagella}

% Any of the following work, and probably many more
%\setmathfont{TeX Gyre Pagella Math}
%\setmathfont{TeX Gyre Termes Math}
%\setmathfont{STIX}
\setmathfont{Asana Math}

\begin{document}
\begin{gather*}
{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ} \\
{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz} \\
\mathcal{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ} \\
\mathcal{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz} \\
\mathscr{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ} \\
\mathscr{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz} \\
\mathbb{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ} \\
\mathbb{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz} \\
\end{gather*}
\end{document}

As pointed out in the comments, you need to use \mathscr (or \let\mathcal=\mathscr).