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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

OpenType? What's wrong with Computer Modern? ;)

I'm not a huge fan of Computer Modern's appearance, but as a practical font for typesetting math it's a work of genius.

Alas, there are hardly any other fonts that include the range of glyphs required for serious mathematical typesetting.

On the subject of XeTeX, fontspec, et al, while they do make using OpenType fonts much easier, alas they cannot magically create corresponding mathematical glyphs. They also, last time I used them, lacked decent support for setting equations using OpenType fonts, though the situation did seem to be improving so that may no longer be an issue.

Now, if someone wanted to sponsor the guys at some of the big font foundries to make matching mathematical glyphs to accompany some of the nice, professional-grade OpenType fonts they make, that would be fabulous, but probably a rather expensive bit of philanthropy given the niche market.

There are some surprising available math fonts, here is a page with sample output showing which available math fonts match which available text fonts:

http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/s...

I appreciate what you're saying, but IMHO almost none of the samples on that page looks sufficiently professional that I would use it to set a textbook. Computer Modern has at least stood the test of time, and gives a clean, uniform appearance to text and mathematical type.

If I were setting a serious work, I would like to use a high quality serif font, something like Emigre's Mrs Eaves or Adobe's Arno Pro, but alas, these fonts have a rather limited range of mathematical glyphs, which means you either get the "two similar but different fonts" problem (which nearly always looks bad) or you have to pick a font that isn't as nice for the body text just because it has matching math symbols available.

Should have mentioned to jump to the bottom of the page. Many of the examples are ugly, but Minion and Utopia are, of course, pro Adobe fonts used in a large number of professionally-typeset books.

Should also point out that for not that much money ($79) you can buy a great looking alternative font called Lucida Bright which comes with a complete set of matching math glyphs. It is much easier on the eyes (both on screen and in print) than the standard CM. Well worth it if you write lot of Tex.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that everything that you'd like to work actually works. E.g. \mathbb, for things like the set of real numbers (\mathbb{R}).

Or am I missing something?

That's like asking "What's wrong with pepperoni pizza?" Nothing's wrong with it, but I like lots of pizzas.

The difference is that pepperoni pizza looks good.

CM is difficult on the eyes when you print it out with a laser printer. Thin lines within the glyphs are too thin.

Otherwise, it's beautiful.

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