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I have download this morning this file .pdf named Simple model for the mechanics of spider webs, and I am interested to know the detail that generate the symbol of pi greco. If I have not made any mistakes I think that it is the cursive of mathematical pi 1

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Wp3516MYcPp9GCNNmlZG9HYIA4R8oUeR0iyKLxc2J2Y0tD50pobMKihTOGbi_k-ESmcJnzI7BtXsIKAeOoYD88woD71GcO69JMdWllnuCOYebmVrBb4

If I look at the properties of the .pdf file, I find these (just I have put only a fragment of the image) with a strange name.

enter image description here

I like very much this pi greco (see the picture below), and....

enter image description here

I would like to know if these fonts can be used in LaTeX and where they can be found.

Thank you very much to all user to a possible help.

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    @downvoter: What is the reason of the downvote?
    – Sebastiano
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 14:30
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    Hi Sebastian. I'm not the downvoter, but perhaps it was downvoted because this is more related to mathematics than graphic design. Just a thought. Did you know there's a Tex Stack Exchange?
    – Billy Kerr
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 19:16
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    The font is a subset.. Acrobat renames subsets.. "AdvP" is most likely part of the original name... that's the best I can offer. You should be aware, much of the document uses this "AdvP" font... not merely the math symbols.
    – Scott
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 19:51
  • @BillyKerr I never thought that you assigned me a failing grade. In fact if other users had done it I would have accepted it very gladly even with a warning or an explanation. Here the problem is really serious: I would also accept a myriad of negative votes but I hate to be targeted by some user who has been persecuting me for five years already. I posted the question here for two reasons: first, because I didn't understand the origin of a strange collection of characters and the identification of a font (especially pi greco) that I like a lot.
    – Sebastiano
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 22:30
  • @BillyKerr I am of the opinion that the downvote is not related to the collection of mathematical characters but that I also have tagged with LaTeX. It probably has bothered some users that I know.
    – Sebastiano
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 22:30

1 Answer 1

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A partial answer

Some Bitstream fonts have the wanted pi. It seems to be just in Bitstream's implementation of the typeface, it isn't the same in versions made by others.

One example: Iowan Old Style Italic

Here's a few letters of it:

enter image description here

As you see the rest of the letters aren't the same, only the pi symbol (hex 0390) is the wanted one. There's only a few Greek symbols.

The same pi exists also in straight versions of several Bitstream fonts except in Bitstream Math with Greek, which has it like it's in your example. That font doesn't have the Italic cut; to get the slanted version the only possibility is to apply mechanical slating if that's possible in the programs you want to use. A guess: Your example font is a version of Bitstream Math with Greek.

A full set of Greeks with the wanted pi are in font GFS PORSON REGULAR, but that's based on an old Greek style typeface:

enter image description here

Technically it's not complex to edit an existing font so that the wanted pi is available. If you start from a font which is free to use, free to modify and free to distribute you avoid legal problems. Many commercial font suppliers like Adobe prohibit creating own versions even to be used in one's home only.

There are ways to extract embedded fonts from PDFs. As already said by others those fonts are generally subsets, they contain only a part of the characters. In this case the fonts also have some obscure coding which is allowed because PDFs are shown ok, but common font extracting methods either generate error messages or leave out parts, like the wanted pi. I guess they are inherited from the original layout program. The program is shown in properties:

enter image description here

BTW. If the extraction happened to succeed you probably would have no right to use the extracted font for anything.

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  • Hi. Thank you very much for your help in these years of being a GSE user, but I'm only interested in pi and not in the font set. I would like to use it as a font. I guess I have to use the LaTeX engine: XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX because with the pdfLaTeX engine the font will not be available. In the meantime I would like to download it and I am thinking how to use it with pdfLaTeX.
    – Sebastiano
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 22:39
  • I would to have a pdf (I am not able to make a .pdf with the exact measure) of this link academic.reed.edu/physics/faculty/griffiths/script_r.zip related to the question of sylvain here. tex.stackexchange.com/questions/21274/script-r-symbol. I would use the same commands but are you able to attach me the .pdf with just the pi greco, like the r or in bold or normal of the file .zip to the link that have I attached to generate the r script of the book "Introduction to Electrodynamics" by David Griffiths? I thank you so much for your help.
    – Sebastiano
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 22:46
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    @Sebastiano (continued) you can try the next PDF dropbox.com/s/fsos64ea5875ns3/HammerPi.pdf?dl=0 It's only a drawing and surely not 100% exact version of the pi shape. No guarantee - as I said, I have no idea what the program actually expects.
    – user82991
    Commented Jul 25, 2021 at 8:38
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    If it happens to work insert the method description as an addendum to your question for those who also try something resembling.
    – user82991
    Commented Jul 25, 2021 at 12:13
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    Try also this version. It has smaller pi dropbox.com/s/kcrzo5z8z93f1q2/HammerPi2.pdf?dl=0
    – user82991
    Commented Jul 25, 2021 at 13:14

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