4 ms·

Every criticism I've seen of Computer Modern is an appeal to authority. > not a designer who knows how to create and balance shapes and lines that are pleasing

• crazygringo 5y ago
  It's not an appeal to authority, but rather to shared taste. It's true there's no reference manual for the equations for pleasing shapes, because however our preferences are expressed in our brain, we haven't been able to decode. But to give one example to your question: the serifs in Computer Modern are thicker than the thin stems of letterforms. That's ugly, full stop. It's not balanced -- the proportions of thicknesses is backwards. The entire function of serifs is to taper and/or finish, never to add weight. Or another: the loop (lower part) of the double-story lowercase "g" simply extends way too far to the right. It makes the letter feel like it's going to tilt and fall over to the left. It's not balanced, period. So these are just two examples of terrible balance. Does that hopefully answer your question in a way that isn't an appeal to authority? Edit: curious why I'm being downvoted for this comment, when I'm just trying to answer the parent comment with actual examples.
  • corty 5y ago
    The slight unbalance and the not-totally-uniform looks make cmr much more readable. The breaking with the typesetting tradition makes it better, because it is unhindered by such useless flourishes as "must taper" or "must look like any other letter fitting into a uniform box of equal greying when smudged". cmr does this while still looking good and pleasing when viewed in whole paragraphs as opposed to single letters. And where cmr absolutely excels is the accompanying greek, math symbols and typesetting. Nothing else comes even close in getting it readable, pleasing and uniform.
    • crazygringo 5y ago
      > The slight unbalance and the not-totally-uniform looks make cmr much more readable. That's frankly a very idiosyncratic take, and not one many professionals would agree with. By that logic, toolbars with icons would become easier to use if their icons were all slightly off-center from each other -- which is very much not the case. Part of reading legibility comes from the shapes of words, not letters by themselves. Generally speaking, we read words -- not letters. When individual letters are off balance or especially non-uniform, they draw attention to themselves rather than making the word coherent as a whole. This, of course, is one of the reasons why kerning pairs are so important. Also, tapering isn't a "flourish" it's just how roman serifs work. And "uniform box of equal greying when smudged" is neither a flourish nor a rule at all, it appears to be something you've invented.
  • mcguire 5y ago
    "The serifs in Computer Modern are thicker than the thin stems of letterforms." That's true of all serif fonts with thin stems, no?
    • crazygringo 5y ago
      No. Bodoni is the quintessential thin-stem font, and you can see that the serifs are simply a continuation of the thin stroke, not any thicker: https://www.google.com/search?q=bodoni&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=bodoni&tbm=isch
  • svat 5y ago
    > the serifs in Computer Modern are thicker than the thin stems of letterforms. 1. Is this really true? I went to the bookshelf and pulled out three Knuth books, and at least to my eye, the serifs don't look noticeably thicker than the letter stems in the unbalanced way you mentioned. The exact proportions could be found by checking Volume E or generating proofs from the Metafont sources (haven't tried that), but this seems like the well-known problem with the "spindly" Type-1 versions of CM that many people use today, than in Knuth's actual Computer Modern as in his printed books. (See https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/361722/48 https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/361722/48 for pictures.) 2. Is this any worse in Computer Modern than in Monotype Modern, the typeface that Knuth was trying to reproduce? This is the font used for TAOCP Vol 1 first edition (1968), Vol 2 first edition (1969), Vol 3 first edition (1973) and Vol 1 second edition (1973). Those books were typeset with hot-metal typesetting (on Monotype machines), and in fact when Addison-Wesley approached Knuth in 1962 (when he was in grad school) to write a book, he was excited because he loved the appearance of their books. The publishers' move to phototypesetting could not recapture that look, and digital typesetting was starting to become feasible, so he took up the problem himself: he wanted to reproduce Monotype Modern so he needed TeX to typeset it, and Metafont to specify it (and Computer Modern was the result). My guess is that the opinion you're expressing results from a combination of both the above: • Yes, what Knuth was aiming for (Monotype Modern 8A, or the look of math textbooks he used as a student, or mathematical journals of a certain period: https://projecteuclid.org:443/euclid.bams/1183544082 https://projecteuclid.org:443/euclid.bams/1183544082 ) was very much an early 20th-century / late 19th-century look, and it seems the fashion in contemporary typography circles (I suspect this started with William Morris in the 19th century already) to look down on that period and all that it entails (like larger spaces between sentences: witness Bringhurst's comments about "In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design" etc). So, people au fait with modern typographical fashions don't quite like the associated style (Scotch Roman typefaces, etc), while many mathematicians quite prefer it. • The poor Type 1 versions of Computer Modern cause the letter stems to appear thin, and even more so on low-resolution devices like monitors, causing the serifs to appear thicker in comparison. Personally, comparing Monotype Modern (as in the first editions of TAOCP) and Computer Modern (in print, and using "true" CM), I don't think Computer Modern looks worse than the source typeface in terms of having terrible balance or appearing like "a font designed by an engineer"; the issue is probably more the "shared taste" you mentioned: Knuth's target aesthetic was itself different.
  • cnity 5y ago
    I actually appreciate this answer and am sorry you're getting downvotes. That said, the given justifications still seem subjective to me (why should serifs only taper? I actually like the added weight because it seems to emphasize the orientation of the letter. Why should fonts be scrutinized according to the laws of physics?). I suppose to some degree the difficulty I'm having is what I view as an over-emphasis on objectivity in a discussion about aesthetics. Not that your perspective is wrong per se, but I find it hard to ignore the strong preference among my peers for choosing (and commenting positively on) this font.
    • BrandoElFollito 5y ago
      Completely outside of that topic: how do you know that are being downvoted? I do not see any indication (is it a matter of rep?)
      • cnity 5y ago
        You can see the points on your own posts indicated to the left of your name.
        • BrandoElFollito 5y ago
          Yes, but you were sorry that they were being downvoted. i thought you saw the score on their post somewhere.
          • cnity 5y ago
            No, I am taking them on their word.
• jhanschoo 5y ago
  CM is really light. As an undergrad I had more trouble reading poor quality photocopies of notes in CM that my own notes not using CM did not suffer from. In an extreme, one of my professors presented from notes and blew up his notes' display size like crazy, and I could never get a reasonably information-dense printout of those by printing multiple pages (those sizes were so large the fonts were too slim for the printer's resolution). Granted, it is an abuse of good typesetting, but I imagine my predicament would be helped with a font that had proper contrast.