
Computer Modern on the Web - phaer
http://checkmyworking.com/cm-web-fonts/
======
sp332
From the transcript on this video
[http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/55;jsessionid=...](http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/55;jsessionid=D59822370796D1D8524FA73E19509C52)

 _Well, I came up with 25 of the 26 letters in the middle of June and they
weren 't beautiful but they were pretty close to being okay to my eyes at the
time, but then there was the letter S. And I couldn't figure out how to draw a
blasted S. And it has a very peculiar shape where it changes over from curves
left, then right a little bit, and then back and forth, and what's going on in
this shape. None of my mathematical formulas would handle it. And I spent
several days without sleep up at the lab, trying different things and every
time it would just look very ugly. And finally, I had to come home and go to
bed and I showed my results to Jill and she said to me, ‘Well Don, why don't
you make it s-shaped?’_

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fidotron
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
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?

~~~
nwhitehead
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
Similarly, I've had nice results combining Zapf Renaissance Antiqua text (via
XeTeX fontspec) with Palatino maths and Optima headings.

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pnathan
Sweet! For some reason, I find Computer Modern to be perhaps the most
beautiful serif font I've come across, handily beating out any competitor I've
looked at.

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illicium
Even if you use a Computer Modern webfont, your page won't look even remotely
as good as if it was produced using TeX. Browsers are lacking proper
justification (Knuth-Plass line breaking), hyphenation (which kind of exists
in CSS3), microtype optimizations (e.g. hanging punctuation) and automatic
ligatures. There are some hacks [1] to solve these issues, but easy immaculate
typography on the web is currently a no-go.

[1]
[http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/](http://www.bramstein.com/projects/typeset/)

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noelwelsh
Here's an article typeset in Computer Modern that was recently on the HN
frontpage: [http://swannodette.github.io/2013/12/17/the-future-of-
javasc...](http://swannodette.github.io/2013/12/17/the-future-of-javascript-
mvcs/)

Great article, but ZOMG is the typesetting atrocious! Look at the kerning
between F and u in Future, and a and S in JavSscript. So, so bad.

Knuth's contribution to typography was great for its time but with so many
excellent free fonts available we have moved beyond the need for Computer
Modern.

~~~
leephillips
Do these kerning problems have anything to do with the design of Computer
Modern or with TeX? I don't think so; whatever you're seeing on that page
results from the interaction of your browser, the markup, and the MathJax
scripts.

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rz2k
I use Computer Modern Typewriter Oblique (which is plain slanted) for my font
in terminals and text editors. I really like how it looks. Unfortunately, some
IDEs like IntelliJ ignore the oblique part and print the characters upright.
However oblique is compatible with syntax highlighting that uses italics,
because the true italic form of CM Typewriter resembles a script typewriter.

Anyway, I always consider adding CM Typewriter Oblique to lists of the best
monospaced fonts, but consider that maybe it will come across as too
"hipster".

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SeanLuke
I really dislike Computer Modern.

I think it is an amateur typeface. Its italic glyphs are at different angles
from one another. None of its bowls are consistent. It has strange and
discordant differences in thicknesses across letters. The serif fonts are
mangled in kerning and positioning in really weird ways. And the roman is
extremely wide, extremely thin, and surprisingly hard to read when used for
its primary purpose: papers.

I think CM is predominant in TeX not because it's a good looking typeface.
It's not predominant in TeX because it's nicely compatible with provided math
symbols (which it is). CM is predominant only because for a very, very long
time it was the only option available, and so people got used to scientific
papers being "supposed" to look like that.

But this is not a field known for its typesetting aesthetics: heck even as
late as 2003 the large majority of these papers were still using the CM
bitmaps rather than vector fonts, resulting in an unreadable mess when
converted to PDF files. Tables are written so as to absolutely maximize the
number of horizontal and vertical rule lines you can possibly stuff into a
text table. The ACM's official style file is so awful and broken that multiple
style files have been created to secretly patch it. Some have historically
been filled with swear words. And I cannot count the number of papers nowadays
which write things like $foo$, not realizing that this de-kerns the letters.

Also, it appears the version from this link is missing its kerning.

~~~
ubercow13
What might a paper use $foo$ for? Aside from a product of three variables
which presumably shouldn't be kerned

~~~
Athas
A multi-letter variable name.

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brennen
I think that most of what I appreciate about Computer Modern is that it sends
the neighborhood font nerds into fits of white-hot rage every time I use it.

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ivan_ah
This is very cool and will allow for a consistent appearance of book math
content both online and offline.

Something about the cm fonts gives them an air of respectability.

Thx for porting these fonts!

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Millennium
Glad to hear it. I've been thinking about blogging a read-through of Knuth,
and I wanted to use the font as an homage.

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cec
I absolutely _love_ the "Bright" font, and have immediately started using it
[1]. It didn't quite look right on the headings though, so I'll stick with
Open Sans for those.

[1] [http://chriscummins.github.io/](http://chriscummins.github.io/)

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DanBC
edit: This is my connection! Sorry.

[http://imgur.com/KovolXb](http://imgur.com/KovolXb)

Using Chrome (latest?) on Vista. Pink blobs are near, not on, flaws.

~~~
twotwotwo
Chrome beta is doing this to me on a lot of sites that load Web fonts. It's
like it laid out the page using the metrics from the Web font, but then
rendered it using a system fallback font.

~~~
leephillips
It's a tradition: [http://lee-phillips.org/google-
chromeBadKerning/](http://lee-phillips.org/google-chromeBadKerning/)

