Options for Greek letters in sansmath

25 May 2017

For presentations and labels in figures I like sans-serif fonts, TeX Gyre Heros being my default choice. The default math font doesn't go together with sans-serif fonts:

Which math font should you choose? An overview and comparison of free math fonts was done by Stephen G. Hartke and is available here.

Using sansmath

I'm using sansmath. With package enabled, the above example becomes

from

\documentclass[border=2,convert={density=600}]{standalone}

\usepackage{tgheros}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage{sansmath}
\sansmath

\begin{document}

A $\varepsilon$ character. Math is $\sum_{i=1}^{n} \alpha_n
x^{\gamma_n}$. Also $\beta$, $\varrho$ and $\varphi$.

\end{document}

You notice that this is better, but not good enough yet. Greek letters are not by default part of sansmath. In the following I'm showing three options for Greek letters in sansmath.

1. eulergreek

The most straight forward solution is to provide the eulergreek option to sansmath, obtaining

from

\documentclass[border=2,convert={density=600}]{standalone}

\usepackage{tgheros}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage[eulergreek]{sansmath}
\sansmath

\begin{document}

A $\varepsilon$ character. Math is $\sum_{i=1}^{n} \alpha_n
x^{\gamma_n}$. Also $\beta$, $\varrho$ and $\varphi$.

\end{document}

2. bm

Another option is to use the bm package. With the package we get

from

\documentclass[border=2,convert={density=600}]{standalone}

\usepackage{tgheros}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage{sansmath}
\sansmath

\usepackage{bm}

\begin{document}

A $\bm{\varepsilon}$ character. Math is $\sum_{i=1}^{n} \bm{\alpha}_n
x^{\bm{\gamma}_n}$. Also $\bm{\beta}$, $\bm{\varrho}$ and $\bm{\varphi}$.

\end{document}

Note that in this case every greek letter needed to bolded separately using \bn{ }.

3. supplying Greek letters from a different font

In an answer to a question on tex.stackexchange.com on the topic, the following was suggested. One can get, for example,

by supply the greek letter definitions from another font - in this case iwona - manually:

\documentclass[border=2,convert={density=600}]{standalone}

\usepackage{tgheros}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\usepackage{sansmath}
\sansmath

\DeclareSymbolFont{Greekletters}{OT1}{iwona}{m}{n}
\DeclareSymbolFont{greekletters}{OML}{iwona}{m}{it}

\DeclareMathSymbol{\alpha}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"0B}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\beta}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"0C}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\gamma}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"0D}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\varepsilon}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"22}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\varrho}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"25}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\varphi}{\mathord}{greekletters}{"27}

\begin{document}

A $\varepsilon$ character. Math is $\sum_{i=1}^{n} \alpha_n
x^{\gamma_n}$. Also $\beta$, $\varrho$ and $\varphi$.

\end{document}

If you want to use this solution, make sure you use the full definition of Greek symbols as presented by user egreg in the LaTeX Stack Exchange post.

Comparison

Here a comparison of the three solutions in the order that they were presented

There's a GitHub repository with all the above code.