geist-font — LaTeX support for the Geist, Geist Mono and Geist Serif typefaces

The geist-font CTAN distribution provides the geist, geistmono and geistserif LaTeX packages for Geist, the sans-serif, monospaced and serif typeface family designed by Vercel. Geist and Geist Mono are covered in all nine weights (Thin through Black) with matching italics; Geist Serif, a display serif, in its four variants.

The packages work with pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX. Under XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX the fonts are used directly through fontspec. Under pdfLaTeX the packages use metrics generated with autoinst: Geist and Geist Mono come as Type1 fonts, because pdfTeX cannot subset CFF-flavoured OpenType, while Geist Serif's TrueType fonts are embedded as they are.

Usage

\usepackage{geist}      % Geist as the sans-serif family
\usepackage{geistmono}  % Geist Mono as the typewriter family
\usepackage{geistserif} % Geist Serif as the roman family

To set Geist as the document's main font:

\usepackage{geist}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

Geist ships nine weights, more than NFSS's traditional series axis exposes. The usual \textbf and \textit work as expected, and the additional weights are reachable through \fontseries; see the package documentation for the full weight table.

Geist Serif comes in four variants that differ only in the shape of their dots: regular, square, triangle and heart. Pick one with \usepackage[variant=heart]{geistserif}, or switch locally with \geistserifvariant{heart}. Each variant has a single regular weight and no italic, so \textbf and \textit fall back to the upright regular face.

Fonts included

Taken from the upstream vercel/geist-font release v1.9.2.

The version of this distribution follows the upstream release it packages. A change to the LaTeX support alone, on the same fonts, adds a fourth component, as in 1.9.2.1.

Geist Pixel, a set of five decorative display faces in the same upstream release, is not packaged. It has no weight or shape axis to map onto NFSS and no obvious use in a document body. Open an issue if you want it.

License

• The fonts, and everything derived from them (the Type1 fonts, metrics and encodings generated during packaging), are licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 — see OFL.txt. Geist declares no Reserved Font Name.
• The LaTeX support files (.sty, .fd) and the documentation are licensed under the LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3c or later.

Building from source

Support files are generated with autoinst from the CTAN fontools package, which in turn drives otftotfm from the LCDF TypeTools. Neither is needed to use the package, only to rebuild it.

./build.sh    # regenerate everything into build/ and dist/
./verify.sh   # install the flat dist/geist-font tree into a throwaway texmf
              # tree and compile with pdflatex, xelatex and lualatex

The CTAN upload is dist/geist-font.zip. It contains only the flat geist-font/ package tree, whose top-level directory matches the CTAN package ID as required. TeX Live constructs its installation layout from that tree.

build.sh downloads autoinst from the CTAN fontools package and needs otftotfm (LCDF TypeTools) and either tectonic or xelatex to build the documentation. verify.sh needs a full TeX Live. The texlive/texlive container has everything both need, so nothing has to be installed locally:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/pkg" -w /pkg -u "$(id -u):$(id -g)" -e HOME=/tmp \
    texlive/texlive:latest ./build.sh    # likewise for ./verify.sh

Running as your own user keeps build/ and dist/ owned by you; HOME=/tmp gives updmap-user and the TeX caches somewhere writable.

The package is generated in OT1 and T1 only. autoinst turns its encoding list into a \RequirePackage{fontenc} call whose last entry becomes the document's current encoding, and with LY1 in that list every family lacking an LY1 shape — Computer Modern, so anything still using \rmfamily — is silently substituted with Times. T1 covers the same ground without that side effect.