The STIX Project has finally released a first beta version of their fonts. STIX stands for Scientific and Technical Information Exchange and the fonts were designed specifically for publishing scientific or mathematical texts. The STIX Project was started more than 10 years ago and is a collaboration of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the American Physical Society (APS), Elsevier, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). A typical scientific text written with the STIXGeneral font looks like this:

In biomedical research we need (mostly greek) symbols, but for mathematicians and physicists the needs are far more complicated. The final version of the STIX fonts should be released soon, and the fonts will be freely available. I wrote previously about the lack of symbol font support in online writing tools such as Google Docs and Buzzword. The STIX fonts should be a tremendous help for them.