4 ms·

I swear that a good amount of the TeX love is cargo culting, including any appreciation of Computer Modern, which is a seriously ugly typeface. It's almost as i

I swear that a good amount of the TeX love is cargo culting, including any appreciation of Computer Modern, which is a seriously ugly typeface. It's almost as if adopting it for the web is simply a grasp for mathematical credibility more than any real aesthetic consideration. Note: I'm not criticising TeX, but changing fonts away from CM is about the first thing anyone concerned with quality output should be doing.

twowordbird 13y ago
Somebody always posts this comment re: Computer Modern, but I've never seen anybody offer up some of these strictly superior printing fonts (of which there are apparently many). Would you care to link some examples?
- fidotron 13y ago
  Junicode is a far better classic serif, for example.
- nwhitehead 13y ago
  I prefer Palatino when typesetting mathematics using latex. It looks nicer than Computer Modern and is super easy to use. Nowadays I use xelatex and actual fonts instead of staying stuck in the tex font ghetto. http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/palatino/ http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/palatino/
  - jasomill 13y ago
    Similarly, I've had nice results combining Zapf Renaissance Antiqua text (via XeTeX fontspec) with Palatino maths and Optima headings.
- pseut 13y ago
  I've become a fan of bitstream charter lately[1], available through the mathdesign package \usepackage[bitstream-charter]{mathdesign} I am not a designer, but I think it looks good with adobe's source code pro[2]: \usepackage{sourcecodepro} [1] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/charter/ http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/charter/ [2] http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayFontPackage&code=1960 http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=d...
- ska 13y ago
  The main problem isn't supporting other text fonts (including TTF), but the fact that those fonts don't properly support the symbols. So all in all it's a bit of a nasty aesthetic trade-off. There are several packages that attempt to create symbol sets to match things like palatino, with varying success. Some are just terrible. And there are a few commercially available ones that do support most if not all symbols, so if it's worth a few hundred dollars to you there is that route. Nothing has great solution for web, really. We're slowing moving from execrable to ugly but at least it is progress.
- HitherYon 13y ago
  You might try the fouriernc package. I don't know if it's superior, but I do find it easier on the eyes. http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/fouriernc/ http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/fouriernc/
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I swear that a good amount of the TeX love is cargo culting, including any appreciation of Computer Modern, which is a seriously ugly typeface. Aesthetics can't be "cargo culting" -- to assert that it is requires misunderstanding aesthetics, cargo culting, or both. > It's almost as if adopting it for the web is simply a grasp for mathematical credibility more than any real aesthetic consideration. Familiarity in context is a real aesthetic consideration.
- fidotron 13y ago
  Nonsense. As someone else posted here: "Something about the cm fonts gives them an air of respectability." This means that almost every maths paper they read before was typeset in it, thus to be taken seriously they think they need to be as well. This is cargo culting because it is adopting the trappings of insightful study in the field of mathematics without necessarily doing anything of the sort.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Well, ok, the people reading the text that respect it more are doing cargo cult... But that's a huge piece of non-news. We already know that people don't act rationally, and that if we try to sell something, it must fit our irrationality. Using the font because it looks respectable isn't cargo cult at all. That's the rational thing to do... That is, once you verify that the effect is real.
  - twotwotwo 13y ago
    Well, two things. One, CMR shares some traits with other 'old' fonts (sometimes actually old, other times aiming for a dusty or scholarly air): lots of variation in stroke width, relatively prominent serifs, a 'true italic' where some italic letterforms look much different from their roman counterparts. (Knuth was making these for a textbook, so maybe he went for a look similar to textbooks of the time, at some intuitive level at least.) If you look on Google Fonts, Playfair Display and Old Standard TT do some of those same things in (I think) also aiming for an old-timey air. So, I think some of the "air of respectability" comes in part from traits shared with some other fonts, not just from appearing on math papers. Two, the "feel" and aesthetic aspects of a font mostly do come from memory and associations. nytimes.com doesn't use a serif because it's more readable on the Web or something; they do it because serifs and newspapers go together in most folks' minds. Even the most thought-out arguments about fonts have associations as their bedrock: when Robert Bringhurst laments that a font shows no real axis with its variations in stroke width and therefore fails to evoke calligraphy, the axis he's missing is still important "merely" because of its association with calligraphy. Other than purely technical arguments about readability (which you could dispose of with an A/B test), most opinions about fonts are, one way or another, rooted in associations. So if folks do appreciate CM partly because of their experience with it I don't see anything illegitimate about that (unless maybe it were utterly unreadable, rather than just quirky). You don't have to use or like the CM fonts, but I don't see how anyone's clearly indisputably wrong for liking them either, any more than with any other font.
MaxGabriel 13y ago
I hate the look of Computer Modern as well, finding its letters very thin and hard to read on mobile. I can't really convince anyone on aesthetics, but please look at how the default zoom level on Mobile Safari renders many of the bold characters as having this weird double-line effect: https://www.dropbox.com/s/enojel6ymuhfnlw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%2011%2056%2044%20AM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/enojel6ymuhfnlw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2... https://www.dropbox.com/s/gkk1aqgduka40gw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%2012%2009%2036%20PM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/gkk1aqgduka40gw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2...
- mrottenkolber 13y ago
  > I hate the look of Computer Modern as well, finding its letters very thin and hard to read on mobile. Doesn't look any good on my screen either, but it's a print font I'd expect it to become pretty at around 210 dpi.
- twotwotwo 13y ago
  Oof. I think that's this issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont-ttf-s-bold-font-weight-rendering-bug http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont-t... I think the problem is that none of the TTFs include bold italic, so the browser generates a 'fake bold' of the italic. This time, MobileSafari is doing it oddly. Apparently a workaround is to fake bold yourself with -webkit-text-stroke (icky) and pretty workarounds would be to avoid bold italic or have a separate .ttf for it.
  - MaxGabriel 13y ago
    Hmm, perhaps. But it also occurs on plain bold text https://www.dropbox.com/s/h2zy36l447mj8j7/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%205%2031%2005%20PM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/h2zy36l447mj8j7/Photo%20Dec%2023%2...
    - twotwotwo 13y ago
      (Might be that the .ttf didn't have CM Roman bold either, then.)
davidgerard 13y ago
You're not a real scientist unless you load Computer Modern into your copy of Word.
- kleiba 13y ago
  You're not a real scientist if you use Word.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    You need to talk to more actual scientists.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    I have yet to persuade a single chemist, earth scientist or environmental scientist to switch from Word to LaTeX. They can be persuaded to use Libre Office, however.
    - kleiba 13y ago
      In all fairness, the great-grant parent's post wasn't completely serious, nor was mine ;-)
      - ChristianMarks 13y ago
        Yes, I knew that, but I didn't let that stop me!
pseut 13y ago
I was going to disagree with the "cargo culting" statement, but then read the OP...
dubya 13y ago
The CM fonts are great for actual math, mostly because of the matching math characters. The only other near-complete math fonts I know of are Lucida Bright and a Times version, neither of which are free. Most of the other free solutions just smoosh something like Palatino for text together with the CM math fonts or use an incomplete math font with CM fallbacks.
- ska 13y ago
  This is the real reason. CM works pretty well right out of the box (and by default, so if you don't care that's what you get) for mathematics, very few fonts do and most of those are expensive. What people seem to forget is what a terrible, terrible state of affairs it was that drove Knuth to spend 10 years or whatever on this stuff. Prior to that the options universally sucked. Even now there really aren't many viable alternatives for typesetting mathematics, and TeX/LaTeX is by far the best of them. But it only comes with one (or two if you count Euler) with full symbol support.

twowordbird 13y ago

Somebody always posts this comment re: Computer Modern, but I've never seen anybody offer up some of these strictly superior printing fonts (of which there are apparently many). Would you care to link some examples?

fidotron 13y ago
Junicode is a far better classic serif, for example.
nwhitehead 13y ago
I prefer Palatino when typesetting mathematics using latex. It looks nicer than Computer Modern and is super easy to use. Nowadays I use xelatex and actual fonts instead of staying stuck in the tex font ghetto. http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/palatino/ http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/palatino/
- jasomill 13y ago
  Similarly, I've had nice results combining Zapf Renaissance Antiqua text (via XeTeX fontspec) with Palatino maths and Optima headings.
pseut 13y ago
I've become a fan of bitstream charter lately[1], available through the mathdesign package \usepackage[bitstream-charter]{mathdesign} I am not a designer, but I think it looks good with adobe's source code pro[2]: \usepackage{sourcecodepro} [1] http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/charter/ http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/charter/ [2] http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayFontPackage&code=1960 http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=d...
ska 13y ago
The main problem isn't supporting other text fonts (including TTF), but the fact that those fonts don't properly support the symbols. So all in all it's a bit of a nasty aesthetic trade-off. There are several packages that attempt to create symbol sets to match things like palatino, with varying success. Some are just terrible. And there are a few commercially available ones that do support most if not all symbols, so if it's worth a few hundred dollars to you there is that route. Nothing has great solution for web, really. We're slowing moving from execrable to ugly but at least it is progress.
HitherYon 13y ago
You might try the fouriernc package. I don't know if it's superior, but I do find it easier on the eyes. http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/fouriernc/ http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/fouriernc/

dragonwriter 13y ago

> I swear that a good amount of the TeX love is cargo culting, including any appreciation of Computer Modern, which is a seriously ugly typeface. Aesthetics can't be "cargo culting" -- to assert that it is requires misunderstanding aesthetics, cargo culting, or both. > It's almost as if adopting it for the web is simply a grasp for mathematical credibility more than any real aesthetic consideration. Familiarity in context is a real aesthetic consideration.

fidotron 13y ago
Nonsense. As someone else posted here: "Something about the cm fonts gives them an air of respectability." This means that almost every maths paper they read before was typeset in it, thus to be taken seriously they think they need to be as well. This is cargo culting because it is adopting the trappings of insightful study in the field of mathematics without necessarily doing anything of the sort.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Well, ok, the people reading the text that respect it more are doing cargo cult... But that's a huge piece of non-news. We already know that people don't act rationally, and that if we try to sell something, it must fit our irrationality. Using the font because it looks respectable isn't cargo cult at all. That's the rational thing to do... That is, once you verify that the effect is real.
- twotwotwo 13y ago
  Well, two things. One, CMR shares some traits with other 'old' fonts (sometimes actually old, other times aiming for a dusty or scholarly air): lots of variation in stroke width, relatively prominent serifs, a 'true italic' where some italic letterforms look much different from their roman counterparts. (Knuth was making these for a textbook, so maybe he went for a look similar to textbooks of the time, at some intuitive level at least.) If you look on Google Fonts, Playfair Display and Old Standard TT do some of those same things in (I think) also aiming for an old-timey air. So, I think some of the "air of respectability" comes in part from traits shared with some other fonts, not just from appearing on math papers. Two, the "feel" and aesthetic aspects of a font mostly do come from memory and associations. nytimes.com doesn't use a serif because it's more readable on the Web or something; they do it because serifs and newspapers go together in most folks' minds. Even the most thought-out arguments about fonts have associations as their bedrock: when Robert Bringhurst laments that a font shows no real axis with its variations in stroke width and therefore fails to evoke calligraphy, the axis he's missing is still important "merely" because of its association with calligraphy. Other than purely technical arguments about readability (which you could dispose of with an A/B test), most opinions about fonts are, one way or another, rooted in associations. So if folks do appreciate CM partly because of their experience with it I don't see anything illegitimate about that (unless maybe it were utterly unreadable, rather than just quirky). You don't have to use or like the CM fonts, but I don't see how anyone's clearly indisputably wrong for liking them either, any more than with any other font.

MaxGabriel 13y ago

I hate the look of Computer Modern as well, finding its letters very thin and hard to read on mobile. I can't really convince anyone on aesthetics, but please look at how the default zoom level on Mobile Safari renders many of the bold characters as having this weird double-line effect: https://www.dropbox.com/s/enojel6ymuhfnlw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%2011%2056%2044%20AM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/enojel6ymuhfnlw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2... https://www.dropbox.com/s/gkk1aqgduka40gw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%2012%2009%2036%20PM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/gkk1aqgduka40gw/Photo%20Dec%2023%2...

mrottenkolber 13y ago
> I hate the look of Computer Modern as well, finding its letters very thin and hard to read on mobile. Doesn't look any good on my screen either, but it's a print font I'd expect it to become pretty at around 210 dpi.
twotwotwo 13y ago
Oof. I think that's this issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont-ttf-s-bold-font-weight-rendering-bug http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5069752/ios-4-2-webfont-t... I think the problem is that none of the TTFs include bold italic, so the browser generates a 'fake bold' of the italic. This time, MobileSafari is doing it oddly. Apparently a workaround is to fake bold yourself with -webkit-text-stroke (icky) and pretty workarounds would be to avoid bold italic or have a separate .ttf for it.
- MaxGabriel 13y ago
  Hmm, perhaps. But it also occurs on plain bold text https://www.dropbox.com/s/h2zy36l447mj8j7/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%205%2031%2005%20PM.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/h2zy36l447mj8j7/Photo%20Dec%2023%2...
  - twotwotwo 13y ago
    (Might be that the .ttf didn't have CM Roman bold either, then.)

davidgerard 13y ago

You're not a real scientist unless you load Computer Modern into your copy of Word.

kleiba 13y ago
You're not a real scientist if you use Word.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  You need to talk to more actual scientists.
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  I have yet to persuade a single chemist, earth scientist or environmental scientist to switch from Word to LaTeX. They can be persuaded to use Libre Office, however.
  - kleiba 13y ago
    In all fairness, the great-grant parent's post wasn't completely serious, nor was mine ;-)
    - ChristianMarks 13y ago
      Yes, I knew that, but I didn't let that stop me!

pseut 13y ago

I was going to disagree with the "cargo culting" statement, but then read the OP...

dubya 13y ago

The CM fonts are great for actual math, mostly because of the matching math characters. The only other near-complete math fonts I know of are Lucida Bright and a Times version, neither of which are free. Most of the other free solutions just smoosh something like Palatino for text together with the CM math fonts or use an incomplete math font with CM fallbacks.

ska 13y ago
This is the real reason. CM works pretty well right out of the box (and by default, so if you don't care that's what you get) for mathematics, very few fonts do and most of those are expensive. What people seem to forget is what a terrible, terrible state of affairs it was that drove Knuth to spend 10 years or whatever on this stuff. Prior to that the options universally sucked. Even now there really aren't many viable alternatives for typesetting mathematics, and TeX/LaTeX is by far the best of them. But it only comes with one (or two if you count Euler) with full symbol support.