Computer Modern

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Computer Modern

Computer Modern is the family of typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs....
s used by default by the typesetting program TeX

TeX

TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth. Together with the METAFONT language for font description and the Computer Modern typefaces, it was designed with two main goals in mind: to allow anybody to produce high-quality books using a reasonable amount of effort, and to provide a system that would give the exact...
. It was created by Donald Knuth

Donald Knuth

Donald Ervin Knuth is a renowned computer science and Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University.Author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming , Knuth has been called the "father" of the run-time analysis, contributing to the development of, and systematizing formal mathematical techn...
with his METAFONT

METAFONT

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Encyclopedia

Computer Modern is the family of typeface

Typeface

TeX

Donald Knuth

METAFONT

Metafont is a programming language used to define outline font. It is also the name of the interpreter that executes Metafont code, generating the bitmap fonts that can be embedded into e.g....
program, and was most recently updated in 1992. However, the family font was superseded by CM-Super (Computer Modern-super), the latest release dating 2002. The latter was complemented by CM-LGC, which provides support for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, with the latest release dating 2005. Both CM-Super and CM-LGC are included in TeXLive, a modern TeX distribution.

The Computer Modern typefaces are described in great detail (including full source code) in the book Computer Modern Typefaces, volume E in the Computers and Typesetting
Computers and Typesetting

Computers and Typesetting is a 5-volume set of books by Donald Knuth published 1986 describing the TeX and METAFONT systems for digital typography....
series, which is unique in the history of font design: in Knuth's words, they "belong to the class of sets of books that describe precisely their own appearance."

As implied by the name, Computer Modern is a modern font. Modern, or "Didone", fonts have high contrast between thick and thin elements, and their axis of "stress" or thickening is perfectly vertical. Computer Modern, specifically, is based on Monotype

Monotype Corporation

Monotype Imaging Inc. is a typesetting and typeface design company responsible for many developments in printing technology — in particular the Monotype machine which was the first fully mechanical typesetter — and the design and production of typefaces in the 19th and 20th centuries....
Modern 8a, and like its immediate model it has a large x-height

X-height

In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font , as well as the u, v, w, and z....
relative to the length of ascender

Ascender

In typography, an ascender is the portion of a Lower_case grapheme in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a typeface. That is, the part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font's x-height....
s and descender

Descender

In typography, a descender is the portion of a grapheme in a Latin alphabet that extends below the Baseline of a typeface.For example, in the letter y, the descender would be the "tail," or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the v created by the two lines converging....
s.

The most unusual characteristic of Computer Modern, however, is the fact that it is a complete type family designed with the METAFONT system. The Computer Modern source files are governed by 62 distinct parameters, controlling the widths and heights of various elements, the presence of serif

Serif

In typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface that has serifs is called a serif typeface ....
s or old-style numerals, whether dots such as the dot on the "i" are square or rounded, and the degree of "superness

Superellipse

A superellipse is a geometric figure defined in the Cartesian coordinate system as the set of all points withwhere n, a and b are positive numbers....
" in the bowls of lowercase letters such as "g" and "o". Computer Modern is by no means the only METAFONT-designed typeface, but it is the most mature and widely used by far.

The advance of printer technology has reduced the need for software rasterizers like METAFONT. Outline fonts (to be rendered by the printer or display system) are now generally preferred. As a result, many users have now migrated to Postscript-based replacements, mostly Type 1

PostScript fonts

PostScript fonts are outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional desktop publishing, which uses PostScript file format to encode font information....
implementation of Computer Modern, maintained by the American Mathematical Society

American Mathematical Society

The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematics research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians....
, or Latin Modern, instead of the original METAFONT-based Computer Modern.

External links

- Type 1 CM-based fonts for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.
and .
X11 licensed