[Tex/LaTex] Set a specific character to a certain font

fontspdftextextcomp

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{helvet} 
\begin{document}

\textcolonmonetary % this character can be printed if i remove the helvet pacakge

\end{document}

If I use \usepackage{helvet} the line \textcolonmonetary fails with:

Package textcomp Error: Symbol \textcolonmonetary not provided by
(textcomp)                font family phv in TS1 encoding.
(textcomp)                Default family used instead.

That command comes from the \textcolonmonetary package. The character is the Costa Rican colón (₡).

Is there anyway I can just wrap that character in a specific font? If so, how do I find out which font supports that character and which commands would I use?

This is for PDF LaTeX, btw, not XeTeX and no I can't switch.

Best Answer

You could, if you wished, do something like this. I'm assuming you are switching to sans-serif font and that the symbol is required in this context. So CM Sans is a better option than CM Roman.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{helvet}
\let\oldtextcolonmonetary\textcolonmonetary
\renewcommand*\textcolonmonetary{{\fontfamily{cmss}\selectfont\oldtextcolonmonetary}}
\begin{document}
\sffamily
abc \textcolonmonetary % this character can be printed when I remove the helvet pacakge
abc
\end{document}

symbols switch

There are better ways to do this, but if you just want a quick fix and something which will at least get the symbol typeset, this should work.

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