[Tex/LaTex] \textlf{} for light font weight – how common

fontsfontspectext-decorationstypefaces

In the allrunes.sty documentation (which uses Metafont), I’ve recently seen the \textlf macro for the first time. It selects a light font and therefore accompanies the frequent command \textbf and its sibling \textmd for default ‘medium’.

Searching for ‘textlf’ on SX showed that this string is also a package option for Minion Pro, but there it switches on lining figures and it seems some other packages have a command \textlf that does the same.

So I wonder, how commonly supported is \textlf and is there an established alternative without conflicts?
More generally, if I’m using a typeface with fonts for many weights available (e.g. thin, light, semi-bold, bold, heavy, black …), how are they best accessed in Xe-/LuaTeX?

The second question is relevant, for instance, if I was to write a supporting package for an Open Type typeface that provided predefined \text… macros, which wrap fontspec’s \newfontfamily or rather the less known \newfontface within \DeclareTextFontCommand.

Best Answer

in a texlive 2014, updated this morning I get the following from grep (with my annotation in comment at the end of each line):

$ grep "[^a-z]textlf[^a-z]" */*
allrunes/allrunes.sty:\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textlf}{\lfseries}
baskervaldx/Baskervaldx.sty:\DeclareRobustCommand{\textlf}[1]{%    lining figures
fbb/fbb.sty:\DeclareRobustCommand{\textlf}[1]{%    lining figures
heuristica/heuristica.sty:\DeclareRobustCommand{\textlf}[1]{%    lining figures
typeface/typeface.sty:      \PassOptionsToPackage{textlf}{MinionPro}%    lining figures
xcharter/XCharter.sty:\def\textlf#1{{\lfstyle #1}}%    lining figures


$ pwd
/usr/local/texlive/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex

So it seems that the convention is that \textlf where used in all other packages denotes lining figures.

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[Tex/LaTex] Set the “font-weight: lighter/ bolder”

There are various problems with the code you have posted.

You are using TeX primitives to choose fonts rather than the LaTeX commands provided by the fontspec package.
If a particular font doesn't have different weights, then no amount of choosing them will cause the weights to appear. For example, Charis SIL comes only in Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic.
Even when using the XeTeX commands as opposed to the fontspec commands, the "/" suffix to the font name must be in upper-case, not lower case, and (at least from the XeTeX documentation) there are only four possibilities: B, I, BI and IB (the latter two being identical).

So for other weights, I think you need to choose the font by name directly. Here's a version of your document using fontspec commands and Minion Pro, which has various weights (on my system). If you want to use e.g. bold with a font that doesn't have it, you can use the [AutoFakeBold] option when loading the font.

% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX

\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Minion Pro}
\newfontfamily\semibold{Minion Pro Semibold}
\newfontfamily\condensed{Minion Pro Bold Cond}
\newfontfamily\regsemi[BoldFont={* Bold Cond}]{Minion Pro}
\newfontfamily\regitbold[BoldFont={* Bold Italic}]{Minion Pro}
\begin{document} 


{\semibold Some semibold text.}

{\condensed Some bold condensed.}

{\regsemi Regular with \textbf{Semibold} as the bold font.}

{Regular with \textbf{Bold} as the bold font. }

{\regitbold Regular with \textbf{Bold Italic} as the bold font.}
\end{document}

output of code

[Tex/LaTex] Bold weight for custom font

When fontspec doesn’t find the bold or italic of a font, you sometimes have to help it along. If the font’s name is Pecita Bold, \setmainfont{Pecita}[BoldFont={* Bold}] should work (in older versions of fontspec, use \setmainfont[BoldFont={* Bold}]{Pecita}). Section 5.1 of the fontspec documentation gives more information about this.

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Set the “font-weight: lighter/ bolder”

[Tex/LaTex] Bold weight for custom font

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