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Computer Modern and AMSFonts
in Type 1 (PostScript) Form


The PostScript Type 1 implementation of the Computer Modern and AMSFonts produced by and previously distributed by Blue Sky Research and Y&Y, Inc., are now freely available for general use. This has been accomplished through the cooperation of a consortium of scientific publishers with Blue Sky Research and Y&Y. Members of this consortium include:

  • Elsevier Science
  • IBM Corporation
  • Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
  • Springer-Verlag
  • American Mathematical Society (AMS)

In order to assure the authenticity of these fonts, copyright will be held by the American Mathematical Society. This is not meant to restrict in any way the legitimate use of the fonts, such as (but not limited to) electronic distribution of documents containing these fonts, inclusion of these fonts into other public domain or commercial font collections or computer applications, use of the outline data to create derivative fonts or faces, etc. However, the AMS does require that the AMS copyright notice be removed from any derivative versions of the fonts which have been altered in any way. In addition, to ensure the fidelity of TeX documents using Computer Modern fonts, Professor Donald Knuth, creator of the Computer Modern faces, has requested that any alterations which yield different font metrics be given a different name.

The CM fonts collection includes the 75 fonts described in Donald Knuth's Computer Modern Typefaces (Volume E of the Computers & Typesetting series) as well as the "line", "circle" and symbol fonts associated with LaTeX.

The AMSFonts collection includes the Euler, "extra symbol" and cyrillic fonts.

These fonts are available in Macintosh and PFB (binary Type 1) outline formats. Users requiring the fonts in PFA (ASCII Type 1) form should convert them with the aid of one of the following tools, available from the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN):

  • fonts/utilities/ps2mf/pfb2pfa
  • fonts/utilities/ps2pk/ps2pk15/misc/pfb2pfa
  • systems/msdos/4alltex/diskp1/pfb2pfa.zip

The fonts have exactly the same metrics as the bitmap versions of the fonts generated by METAFONT. Therefore, the standard TFM files (available from CTAN in fonts/cm/tfm and fonts/amsfonts/tfm ) should be used for TeX applications.


Obtaining the CM and AMS Type 1 (PostScript) fonts

The canonical versions of these collections are located on the AMS FTP server, ftp.ams.org , as follows:

Note: The Type 1 AMSFonts do not come in all the sizes provided by the METAFONTed bitmap versions. Facilities are provided by style files for both (AMS-)LaTeX and Plain/AMS-TeX to substitute scaled versions using available sizes.

Four system-specific packages are available for each collection:

  • for use on Macintosh, containing the fonts in standard Macintosh Type 1 format
    • packaged as required for use by Textures
    • packaged for use by OzTeX, CMacTeX, or other Mac TeX implementations
  • for use on a Windows or DOS system, containing fonts in PFB format with PFM metrics files;
  • for use on a Unix system, containing fonts in PFB format with AFM metrics files.
The collections are mirrored onto CTAN at
  • fonts/cm/ps-type1/bluesky -- Computer Modern
  • fonts/amsfonts/ps-type1 -- AMSFonts

Each system-specific package includes a READ.ME file which contains instructions for downloading and installing the fonts. Please review the appropriate READ.ME file in its entirety before undertaking to install the fonts on your system.

The AMS does not provide installation assistance or technical support beyond any installation instructions included with the collection. Installation and use of these fonts may require some technical expertise.

A file "cmsample.tex " is included with each bundled CM distribution (it is not distributed separately); this file contains samples of all of the fonts in the collection. Once you have installed the fonts, you may typeset this file using Plain TeX to test your font installation. No comparable test file exists for the AMSFonts collection.


History

The Type 1 versions of the Computer Modern fonts (1990) and AMSFonts (1992) were produced by Blue Sky Research of Portland, Oregon, and Y&Y, Inc., of Concord, Massachusetts, who published the fonts in conjunction with their commercial implementations of the TeX program.

Character outlines for the CM fonts were derived from high-resolution METAFONT-generated character bitmaps by the ScanLab application from Projective Solutions (Ian Morrison and Henry Pinkham), applied and corrected by Douglas Henderson of Blue Sky Research. The outlines for the AMS Euler fonts were derived algorithmically from METAFONT code using tools developed by Y&Y.

Character- and font-level hints were programmed using software from Y&Y, with extensive hand work by Blenda Horn. Font engineering, production, and packaging were by Douglas Henderson and Berthold Horn.

The CMMI* fonts were revised in 1996 to conform to Knuth's changes to the greek delta and arrow characters.