[Tex/LaTex] Generating fonts of all LaTeX math symbols

fontsmetafont

Admission of Confusion

Clearly I'm confused, I'll update the question as best as I can as people point out my lack of understanding.

Ultimate Goal

I like the fonts that pdfLaTeX uses to create documents. I especially like the symbols in ftp://tug.ctan.org/pub/tex-archive/info/symbols/comprehensive/symbols-letter.pdf.

I don't know how these fonts are created. However, I would like to have them as .ttf (or some other format easily usable in my own applications).

I have heard that metafont is related to this (supposedly it's a way to generate fonts). However, as pointed out, metafont is bitmap, whereas ttf is vector.

Question

How do I generate a .ttf (or something similarly usable) for the various math symbols used in amsmath?

More possible points of confusion

Given that pdfLaTeX can produce a .pdf file that contains the amsmath symbols. I assume (perhaps I'm way off here) that there has to be some way to produce .ttf fonts of the amsmath symbols.

Thanks!

Best Answer

It may take more than comments to clarify some things. So here is an answer though it probably won't get what you want. Don't hesitate to ask if there are unclear points.

Metafonts are rarely used today. What you saw are some Type 1 variant of the AMS fonts.
TeX, either pdfTeX or others, don't really generate fonts. Basically what TeX know about fonts are the glyph's metrics: e.g., how large is x or A, what's the width and height and depths they occupy. In the end. What TeX see is a lot of boxes.
However, each box has an input encoding associated with it. So that TeX know things like "this box is an A". And when TeX generate the output DVI or PDF in the case pdfTeX, it maps these boxes to a specific font's glyphs, through the output encoding. And pdfTeX will embde those Type1 fonts. And when a PDF reader open the file, it use the embedded fonts and position information of the PDF file to draw all those glyphs.
So from start to end, TeX does not really generate any fonts. Sometime, when Metafont is really used, today's TeX can automatically call external program, mf etc., to generate the bitmap fonts, but still TeX only sees the glyphs as boxes.

The above explanations are not exactly how TeX works. But it shall explain how TeX sees fonts. Things like encodings has changed from engine to engine. For example LuaTeX use a font table to store the metrics information and use Unicode for both input and output.

So the conclusion is that, pdfTeX has (almost) nothing to do with generating fonts.

Therefore, I think you question can be rephrased as the following

How do I transfer the fonts used in a file to TTF fonts

Find the fonts. Most likely you will find many Type 1 PostScript fonts. You will not find those fonts in the PDF file generated by pdfTeX. (Not exactly, there are tools to extract embedded fonts). You need to read the source file, see what fonts are used, and find the corresponding PostScript fonts.
Use a font editing tool to convert those pfb files, along with their metrics (afm files), to a modern OpenType files. Free tools including FontForge and Adobe Font Development Kit. The later was designed exactly for this purpose: transfer old Type 1 fonts to new OpenType fonts.

Also, why do you want TTF instead of OTF? OTF can be used by most platforms. TTF use quadratic Bézier splines while OpenType can use the same cubic Bézier splines as Type1 fonts (the so called CFF fonts, a PostScript flavor of OTF). I haven't done any actual converting myself, but I think it shall be more natural to convert Type1 to CFF rathe than TTF. I guess you use Windows, and TTF is indeed more common there. But recent Windows support OTF as well (without ClearType obviously, which use TTF hinting explicitly)

The last, I hope I got your idea right. Do you think that because pdfTeX can generate PDF files that can be viewed by modern applications like Adobe Reader, so it must have a way to generate modern format fonts which is commonly used in today's applications? In fact, that is just a feature of the PDF file format, which allows font embedding. And not only TTF, OpenType, Type1, Type3 even bitmap fonts all can be embedded in a PDF file and be viewed by a PDF reader. To do that pdfTeX need to know 1) the font metrics 2) where to find the font files to embed.

If all you want, ultimately, is being able to input those math symbols in other applications, say Word, then you can simply use a OpenType math fonts. Freely available fonts are XITS-Math, Asana-Math, Commercial fonts including LucidaBr Math (cost 90USD) and Minion Math (something like 700EUR for a complete set, but I found it worth it). Also Cambria Math is distributed with Windows and Office (for both Windows and Mac). The last, the computer modern fonts can be replaced with Latin Modern, and Computer Modern math symbols can be found in Latin Modern Math.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] What fonts are available for LaTeX

The LaTeX Font Catalogue provides an overview with examples and how to use them of nearly all freely available fonts with good LaTeX support.

[Tex/LaTex] How to create new font which is thicker version of Computer Modern

Some options include these (see examples below):

Use "Latin Modern" (\usepackage{lmodern}), the updated version of Computer Modern. It looks a bit less spindly on screen and print than the original, in my opinion. (Example below)
Scale "Computer Modern" as demonstrated below (thanks to this answer)
Use the font "Computer Concrete" (\usepackage{concmath}), which Knuth designed as a thicker version of Computer Modern using METAFONT.
Use a similar but thicker font. For example gfsbodoni (\usepackage[default]{gfsbodoni}) is in the same family of "modern" typefaces but perhaps has a more desirable weight.
Use METAFONT directly and adjust it to your liking. This kind of thing was the original purpose of that program.

(EDIT)

Demonstration of font scaling (#2 above):

Here is a way that you can scale the font. You ask for a smaller font size to be magnified to a larger one; since the smaller sizes have thicker strokes, you get a thicker-looking, but also wider font. You can experiment with the proportions. This example scales cmr7 up to the default 10pt.

(I didn't get the italic working yet, and I don't think the bold is scaled, but hopefully someone else can add to this.)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\DeclareFontShape{T1}{cmr}{mx}{n}%
    {<->cmr7}{}
\DeclareFontShape{T1}{cmr}{mx}{it}%
    {<->cmr7}{}

\AtBeginDocument{%
    \fontseries{mx}\selectfont%
}

% to create dummy text for testing
\newcommand{\quickfox}{The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog}
\newcommand{\Fox}{The Quick Brown Fox}
\newcommand{\Dog}{The Lazy Dog}
\newcommand{\Jumps}{Jumps Over}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\section{\Fox}
\quickfox?

\subsection{\Dog}
\emph{\quickfox.}

\paragraph{\Jumps}
\lipsum[1]

\end{document}

Thus, cmr7 scaled to 10pt:

enter image description here

For comparison, here is the example with lmodern and no scaling:

enter image description here

This is gfsbodoni:

enter image description here

And this is concmath (Computer Concrete) (as noted in the comments it really is in a different font family despite being derived from Computer Modern):

enter image description here

(EDIT)

Here is a very basic demonstration of how to get started modifying a Metafont. (It's my first time doing it so take this with a grain of salt.)

Find the Metafont source for Computer Modern 10pt, TEXMF-DIST/fonts/source/public/cm/crm10.mf.
COPY this file to a separate working directory where you won't mess up your TeXLive installation.
Go in and change the "thickness" and "breadth" parameters to larger values. Save the file under a new name, e.g., cmthick.mf
- e.g., line 25: thin_join#:=10/36pt#; % width of extrafine details
Compile the font with METAFONT (see texdoc metafont):
- mf '\mode=localfont; input cmthick'
- gftopk cmthick.600gf
Use the new font. Since this was just for demonstration and I don't know what I'm doing, I just did this in Plain TeX. File cmthicktest.tex:
```
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

\font\cmthick=cmthick
\cmthick

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\bye
```
Compiled with tex cmthicktest && dvips cmthicktest && ps2pdf cmthicktest.ps I get the following:

enter image description here

This is just to show that it can be done. I don't know if this is the right way.

Admission of Confusion

Ultimate Goal

Question

More possible points of confusion

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] What fonts are available for LaTeX

[Tex/LaTex] How to create new font which is thicker version of Computer Modern

Related Question