[XeTeX] Change fonts for different environment/commands

[Joachim Trinkwitz]

Am 01.09.2010 um 21:20 schrieb Marcin Grotomirski:

> How do you create xetex documents that don't look like classic LaTeX document. I mean modern-looking pdfs (created mainly in InDesign) with for example headings in Helvetica in fancy colours.

The 'classic' TeX/LaTeX look is for the first owing to Computer Modern, and second to the standard article/book layout (as far as I know Leslie Lamport intended only to give some examples and thought that people should develop layouts of their own anyway).

So using a professional modern font and switching to one of the alternative document classes floating around should provide you with a distinct look quite easily. I'm mostly using the KOMA-Script classes (part of TeXLive), which have a plethora of options to alter the standard look and have a more modern looking standard anyway. So has memoir, too.

But regarding "headings in Helvetica in fancy colours" -- maybe this is "modern", but I doubt if it's good typography in most cases ... OK, maybe your documents are in this category, but scientific article or decent book layout should avoid such a mess (IMHO of course). Even while KOMA-Script actually *has* sans serif headings as a standard, I most often switch to serif headings.

My 2 euro cents
Joachim

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