Btukfyl

How can I get the 'real number' sign (something like mathbb{R} with the amssymb package in LaTeX) in XeTeX?

How about this?

documentclass{article}

usepackage{amssymb}

begin{document}

begin{tabular}{ll}

Plain-TeX{}:   & ${rm I!R}$\

amssymb:        & $mathbb{R}$

end{tabular}

end{document}

You should put your symbol format definitions in another TeX file; publications tend to have their own styles, and some may use bold Roman for fields like R instead of blackboard bold. You can swap nams.tex with aom.tex. I know, this is more common with LaTeX, but the principle still applies.

For example:

% paper.tex

input nams.tex

$realnumbers$ is connected.



% nams.tex

defrealnumbers{mathbb{R}}

% more definitions for the Notices.



% aom.tex

defrealnumbers{mathbf{R}}

% more definitions for the Annals.

Just change one line in paper.tex to submit to the Annals instead of the Notices.

With lualatex

documentclass{article}

usepackage{unicode-math}

setmathfont{Latin Modern Math}

begin{document}

$ℝ$

end{document}

(not sure how to make it work with XeLaTeX or XeTeX)

There's a couple of ways to go about this:

1. Using the default Computer Modern -font (which, as you've already found out, can be extended with the amssym to have access to BlackBoardBold.)


2. Using Unicode OpenType math fonts. Now this is a bit tricky because the glyph locations need to be (re-)told to TeX. This step can further be split into two different approaches:
   
   
   
   
   1. Use just one family and change the active range by re-telling TeX the glyph positions every time the style changes (i.e. script, fraktur, etc. This is the way I've understood the unicode-math -package does it). For plain-xetex, you could do something along these lines.
   
   
   2. Fix the styles to their own families using mapping-files created with teckit_compile from SIL. See: Changing math font to OTF in XeTeX using plaintex-format.
   
   
   
   

Auto-answer:

input amssym.tex

${Bbb R}$

bye

works fine