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Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com)
Linux.com covers
fonts for TeX. "Even if you're relatively new to TeX, the open
source typesetting program, you're probably familiar with its default
12-point Computer Modern Roman font. TeX distributions actually ship with
thousands of free fonts, however, and more are freely available from places
such as the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Looking for a good way to
show font charts and display samples of any TeX font on your system?
Here's how."
(Log in to post comments)
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 18:38 UTC (Fri) by johnkarp (subscriber, #39285) [Link] The link is broken; there is a missing forward slash after http:.
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 18:54 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] an aside - i would love to be able to use the "computer modern"-like fontas a normal font in terminals, my web browser, etc. does anyone know of a ttf equivalent? thanks!
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 21:16 UTC (Fri) by joib (guest, #8541) [Link] AFAIK latin modern (lmodern) is available in opentype format.
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 21:26 UTC (Fri) by hanwen (subscriber, #4329) [Link] Try running a CM font through mftrace, http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/mftrace/
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 21, 2006 0:04 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] There are already good-quality type1 computer modern fonts in e.g. teTeX,and X can use them. (I've got my X set up to use them and am browsing LWN in computer modern at this instant :) )
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 21:33 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] It doesn't need to be a ttf. You can use the Type 1 font. But keep in mind that Computer Modern is not monospaced. xterm won't look nice.
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 21:44 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] Computer Modern includes a "typewriter" style font, sometimes known as"cmtt". Apparently Debian patches the lmodern package to make sure that one is truly monospaced.
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 23, 2006 9:15 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] They do know that patching Computer Modern is treason, or blasphemy, or something, right?
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 24, 2006 0:07 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] > They do know that patching Computer Modern is treason, or blasphemy,> or something, right?
It's the same deal as Firefox -- you don't try to pass your derivative
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 25, 2006 23:06 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] No, that's not strong enough. Knuth's reaction when someone (Slackware?)*did* fiddle some tiny detail of Computer Modern without changing the name makes it clear that this is more than mere copyright :)
Forget Linus getting religious about the GPL. Knuth's religious about TeX
That sort of monastic dedication to the most nanoscopic details... *that*
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 20, 2006 23:59 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] The article said some fonts have the source code .mf-file (metafont).AFAIK, you can compile those to .ttf...
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 21, 2006 22:56 UTC (Sat) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Try this link-- although I must say the standard reply, "Google is your friend." I did a search of "Computer Modern Truetype", and the first hit was the Wikipedia page for Computer Modern, and the first link in their Resources section was this link. So... you might want to Google first next time...
Ah yes, but... Posted Oct 20, 2006 20:48 UTC (Fri) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]
For these reasons, statements such as "thousands of free fonts" mean as little for metafonts as for truetype. This should not be the case - the fonts should be vastly more versatile, vastly more amenable to analysis, design and development, and vastly more widespread than any other font system. Yes, I am frustrated by the agonizingly slow pace of development on metafonts, TeX and LaTeX (which will reach version 3 any century now), and annoyed by the almost total isolation the branch has moved into. This is an area that has the attention of a decent chunk of the scientific and academic press (none of whom are rich, but none of whom are poor, either) and an area simple enough for Universities to assign development work for across a whole host of departments. By sheer weight of potential numbers and potential cash, this should be the single-fastest developing region of Open Source. By sheer availability, it should also be the most international of all document development environments and the most widely used by archaeologists and anthropologists who need to be able to describe written, spoken or gestured language in rare or unknown forms right there and then. I couldn't tell you what the underlying problem is, only that it is self-evidently great enough that one of the best font systems ever devised is totally unused and unknown outside of TeX.
Ah yes, but... Posted Oct 20, 2006 21:24 UTC (Fri) by hanwen (subscriber, #4329) [Link] FWIW, LilyPond also uses MetaFont and is (by now) fully decoupled from TeX.It's a debatable whether MF is a good environment for designing fonts, though. Font design is largely visual, while parametric description of curves requires some mathematical cluefulness. The combination seems very rare in font designers. I think the TeX CM series (largely written by Knuth himself) is the only real font where each and every parameter is tunable.
Ah yes, but... Posted Oct 20, 2006 23:54 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] Most of what you say is true, but MF is, as far as I can tell, incapable of dealing with a low-resolution device such as your monitor. Other font systems are specifically designed to cope with 75dpi. MF looks wonderful in 2400lpi offset lithography, or 600dpi laser scanning. There's a major difference.
Ah yes, but... Posted Oct 23, 2006 10:47 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] I think you're confusing Metafont with Computer Modern (Knuth's exemplaryfont family, implemented in Metafont). Metafont does contain features that allow a font designer to cater for low-resolution devices (it is all in the documentation). However, a font like Computer Modern Roman, by design, only looks good at very high resolutions. Even 600dpi does not remotely do it justice -- compare a CMR laser printout to, say, the TeXbook.
Anselm
Ah yes, but... Posted Oct 28, 2006 0:54 UTC (Sat) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] Please note that most fonts in TeX distributions are *not* MF fonts, but are Type1 fonts. Even on CTAN, most MF fonts are symbol fonts, we have very few type families that are made in MF.
Also, the TeX community goes away from MF, and targets Type1 (with the GUST work) or Opentype fonts (the latter with XeTeX and new work on Omega that will hopefully get merged with pdfTeX).
And, please don't bring up the LaTeX3 straw man. It's a system to experiment with typesetting and a new way of style programming. Current development for authors happens in LaTeX packages and not in the core system -- and there a lot happens, as one can see from the CTAN announcement list. Of course, there is also ConTeXt, for those who are more interested in powerful typesetting (see http://www.pragma-ade.com/overview.htm).
Joachim
Thousands of TeX fonts at your fingertips (Linux.com) Posted Oct 21, 2006 22:59 UTC (Sat) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] For anybody interested in quality typesetting with TeX, you might take a look at XeTex as well... it produces spectacular results for me (albeit on OS X, but there are Linux and even Windows versions as well.)
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