[Tex/LaTex] Location of Type3 font being used in the document

fonts

When I was looking at the types of fonts being used in my LaTeX document compiled using pdflatex, I found one Type3 font called F209.

A Google search told me that Type3 fonts are also called pk fonts in LaTeX. Upon looking at my log, I saw this entry. MiKTeX\2.9\fonts\pk\ljfour\jknappen\ec\dpi600\ectt1200.pk
Does anyone know what this font type is and what is actually displayed?

This Type3 font is only displayed when I use the package \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}. Is it really necessary to use this package as other people have recommended?

Best Answer

The basic installation of MiKTeX doesn't download the Type1 fonts for the Computer Modern fonts in T1 encoding (actually the European Modern fonts are used, but they are very similar to Knuth's CM). Since the compiler doesn't find Type1 fonts, it includes the bitmap version obtained by running Metafont and converts it into a Type3 font.

The required Type1 fonts are provided by the CM-Super package, that you can install with MiKTeX's package manager.

Alternatively you can specify to use the Latin Modern fonts (again very similar to CM), that should be available in the basic installation:

\usepackage{lmodern}

Since this changes also the text fonts, and from your comment I gather that the minionpro package doesn't change the monospaced font family, you can do

\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{minionpro}

so that the second call overwrites the text fonts chosen by the first one.

Another way would be to change only the monospaced font family:

\usepackage{minionpro}
\renewcommand{\ttdefault}{lmtt}

as lmtt is the name by which Latin Modern Typewriter is known to LaTeX.

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