Editing Computer Modern (section)

==Derived versions==
[[File:CMU Fonts.png|thumb|A sample gallery of many of the fonts from the CMU (Computer Modern Unicode) font family]]
Knuth produced his original Computer Modern fonts using [[Metafont]], a program that reads stroke-based definitions of glyphs and outputs ready-to-use fonts as bitmap image files. He mostly left the font, as with other components of TeX (with the exception of the TeX and Metafont names themselves, a stipulation Knuth made to maintain [[quality control]]), in the [[public domain]].<ref>{{Cite book| chapter=Chapter 28| title=Digital Typography |chapter-url=http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb07-2/tb15knut.pdf |page=560| bibcode= 1983SciAm.249b.106B |last1=Bigelow |first1=Charles |last2=Day |first2=Donald |journal=Scientific American |year=1983 |volume=249 |issue=2 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0883-106|quote=All of the methods described in these books are in the public domain; thus anybody can freely use any of the ideas. The only thing I'm retaining control of is the names, TeX and METAFONT(...) If any changes are made, I won't complain, as long as the changed systems are not called TEX or METAFONT. |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223105832/https://tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb07-2/tb15knut.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | first = Donald E | last = Knuth | title = Computers and Typesettings | url = http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb07-2/tb15gordon.pdf |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223110118/https://tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb07-2/tb15gordon.pdf | journal = TUGboat | volume = 7 | date = 1986 | pages = 95–98|quote=and which he (Leslie Lamport), like Don, placed in the public domain. }}</ref>

The advance of publishing technology ([[PostScript]], [[PDF]], [[laser printer]]s) has reduced the need for bitmap fonts. The preferred formats are now [[Computer_font#Outline_fonts|outline fonts]] such as [[Type 1 font|Type 1]], [[TrueType]], or [[OpenType]], which can be rendered efficiently at arbitrary resolution and using sophisticated anti-aliasing techniques by printer firmware or on-screen document viewers. Therefore, several other projects have ported the Computer Modern fonts into such formats. Some of these projects have also complemented Computer Modern with

* additional characters (euro, accented characters, Cyrillic and Greek script coverage)
* different font encodings (to overcome problems with Knuth's original 8-bit character sets)
* additional font style variants

Several such derivatives are now also widely used and included in [[TeX Live]], a modern TeX distribution.

===CMU===
A current extended release of the Computer Modern family in the general-purpose [[OpenType]] format is the CMU distribution (for Computer Modern [[Unicode]]):

* CMU Serif, the main Computer Modern font family. This includes the four traditional styles of font (regular, italic, bold, bold italic), and also:
** CMU Serif upright italic, an [[Italic type#Upright italics|upright italic]] style similar to cursive upright handwriting
** CMU Serif bold non-extended, a bold weight duplexed to have the same width as the regular style
** CMU Serif roman and bold slanted, two [[oblique type|oblique]] styles
** CMU Classical Serif, an italic design with slightly simpler [[serif]] designs
* [[Concrete Roman]], a [[slab serif]] font in the four standard styles
* CMU Typewriter, a typewriter-style slab serif font
* CMU Sans Serif, a complementary [[sans-serif]] font, and CMU Bright, a lighter style of the same design
** CMU Sans demi-condensed, a condensed style of the same design

CMU is released under the [[SIL Open Font License]].

===BlueSky===
[[File:Computer modern sample text.svg|thumb|right|Computer Modern used to set a maths formula in [[TeX]], the font's original purpose]] Computer Modern was first transformed to a [[PostScript fonts#Type 3|PostScript Type 3]] font format by BlueSky, Inc. in 1988, and then to [[PostScript fonts#Type 1|Type 1]] in 1992 to include [[font hinting]].<ref>{{cite web|archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223111552/https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/fonts/bluesky.html|url=http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/fonts/bluesky.html |title=Blue Sky Research and Computer Modern fonts |publisher=Math.utah.edu |date=1997-12-04 |access-date=2015-06-12}}</ref> The Type 1 version has since then been donated to the [[American Mathematical Society]] (AMS) which distributes them freely under the Open Font License.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/cm/ps-type1/README.bluesky |title=The Adobe Type 1 fonts, previously known on CTAN archives as the "bluesky" fonts, are now distributed as part of the AMS fonts distribution, at CTAN:fonts/amsfonts |publisher=Ctan.org |access-date=2015-06-12}}{{better source needed |date=February 2024|reason=I cannot open this file, so no-one will be able to see the rest of whatever this reference is meant to be.}}</ref> It is found in most standard TeX distributions.

===Latin Modern===
The Latin Modern implementation, maintained by [[Bogusław Jackowski]] and Janusz M. Nowacki of [[TeX User Group Poland]] (GUST), is now standard in the [[TeX]] community and was made through a [[Metafont]]/[[MetaPost]] derivative called [[METATYPE1]]. It was derived from the BlueSky Type 1 fonts, which were converted back into outline-based METATYPE1 programs, from which then the extended Type 1 and OpenType Latin Modern fonts were developed. [[ConTeXt]] uses Latin Modern as default font, instead of Computer Modern.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wiki.contextgarden.net/FAQ#Can_I_change_to_LaTeX.E2.80.99s_Computer_Modern_font.3F |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hQz7O |title=FAQ |website=wiki.contextgarden.net |access-date=2015-06-12}}</ref>

The Type 1 to METATYPE1 to Type 1 round-trip conversion process involved in the production of the Latin Modern fonts tried to preserve the hinting information of the BlueSky fonts; however, it introduced [[rounding error]]s that affect the quality of the hinting at low pixel sizes. As a result, on-screen display of the Latin Modern fonts can result in a less even display of kerning and character heights than with the BlueSky fonts.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11188 |title=LaTeX forum ⇒ Fonts & Character Sets ⇒ A E F and T sized differently in lmodern pacakge? |work=Latex Community |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223115344/https://latex.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11188 |author=buster |date=22 December 2010 |access-date=2015-06-12}}</ref>

The same process was later extended to some free PostScript font clones under the umbrella project [[TeX Gyre]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87hagen-gyre.pdf |title=The New Font Project : TEX Gyre |access-date=2015-06-12 |url-status=live |archive-date=23 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223114901/https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87hagen-gyre.pdf |first1=Hans |last1=Hagen |last2=Ludwichowski |first2=Jerzy B. |last3=Schaa |first3=Volker RW |volume=27 |year=2006 |work=TUGboat}}</ref>

The Latin Modern font has also gained an [[OpenType math]] table.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/lm-math |title=The Latin Modern Math (LM Math) font |language=pl |website=Gust.org.pl |access-date=2015-06-12 |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223114509/https://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/lm-math}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ctan.org/pkg/lm-math |title=lm-math – OpenType maths fonts for Latin Modern |publisher=CTAN Comprehensive TEX Archive Network |date=2014-09-05 |access-date=2015-06-12 |archive-date=23 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223114727/https://www.ctan.org/pkg/lm-math |url-status=live}}</ref> Unlike Computer Modern Math, Latin Modern Math has no pairwise kerning information: OpenType math rendering does not make use of this type of kerning, making such information useless.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sundqvist |first1=Mikael "mickep" |title=opentype math font kern |url=https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/692796 |website=TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange |access-date=24 February 2024 |language=en |date=Aug 5, 2023}}</ref>

===New Computer Modern===
The New Computer Modern font family<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ctan.org/pkg/newcomputermodern |title=NewComputerModern – Computer Modern fonts including matching non-latin alphabets |publisher=CTAN Comprehensive TEX Archive Network |access-date=2021-12-12 |archive-date=23 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223114322/https://www.ctan.org/pkg/newcomputermodern |url-status=live}}</ref> is a large extension in terms of the number of additional glyphs of the Latin Modern fonts which adds support for several more languages such as Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Cherokee and Coptic. This font family comes in two weights, "Regular" and "Book". The book weight is supposed to look slightly heavier compared to the "Regular". Both weights include support for typesetting mathematics; complete coverage of Unicode math blocks is provided, along with some more glyphs needed for mathematics.

===MLModern===
MLModern<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223114204/https://www.ctan.org/pkg/mlmodern |title=MLModern – A blacker Type 1 version of Computer Modern, with multilingual support |publisher=CTAN Comprehensive TEX Archive Network |access-date=2021-12-12}}</ref> is based on the Latin Modern font.  It avoids the spindliness of most other Type 1 versions of Computer Modern and hence looks thicker in comparison to Latin Modern or Computer Modern.

A visual comparison of Computer Modern, Latin Modern, New Computer Modern Book and MLModern is shown here.

[[File:Computer_Modern_2.svg|alt=Generated with pdfLaTeX. The font does not offer upright pi in math mode.|border|frameless|500x500px]][[File:Latin_Modern.svg|alt=Generated with LuaLaTeX.|border|frameless|500x500px]][[File:New_Computer_Modern_Book.svg|alt=Generated with LuaLaTeX.|border|frameless|500x500px]][[File:MLModern.svg|alt=Generated with pdfLaTeX. The font does not offer upright pi in math mode.|border|frameless|500x500px]]

===Others===
* EC fonts&nbsp;– look much like Computer Modern, but have slightly different metrics. These were the first TeX fonts to use the "[[Cork encoding]]" (in LaTeX also known as T1 encoding) that provides precomposed glyphs for West-European languages. The original EC fonts were only available as Metafont generated bitmaps.
* TC fonts&nbsp;– the TeX Companion fonts provide a number of additional symbols commonly used in text.
* BaKoMa fonts&nbsp;– another automatically generated Type1 version of Computer Modern by Basil K. Malyshev, dating to 1994. The fonts remain available for download after Malyshev's 2019 death.
* CM-super<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/ps-type1/cm-super/ |archive-date=23 February 2024 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223113519/https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/ps-type1/cm-super/ |title=tex-archive/fonts/ps-type1/cm-super |publisher=CTAN Comprehensive TEX Archive Network |access-date=2015-06-12}}</ref>&nbsp;– a very large extension of Computer Modern, available in a variety of encodings. These fonts were automatically vectorized from Computer Modern or EC font bitmaps and therefore lack the hinting information in the BlueSky fonts.
* CM-LGC&nbsp;– a Latin, Greek, Cyrillic extension.