Times new roman vs. URW Nimbus Roman 9L?
stefano
my publisher wants a manuscript typeset in Times New Roman throughout.
I chose the mathptmx package under the assumption (as per various
documents I read) that it would indeed select Times New Roman as
default roman font. Instead, I found out (rather, the publisher did)
that the font selected is a Times clone, Nimbus Roman 9L from URW
(whereas Times New Roman is from Monotype, I believe). I was unable
to find out why the package uses the Times clone. Can anyone point me
to a source of information and to possible alternative packages, if
any at all, that would use Times New Roman? Is it a licensing issue? I
was under the assumption the Times New Roman is freely available.
Best,
Stefano
Alan Munn
<41f4b016-af13-48b6...@q30g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
stefano <stefano...@gmail.com> wrote:
AFAIK, Times New Roman is a commercial font. It's only "freely
available" in that it's distributed with some commonly used OS's and
applications.
Perhaps the simplest solution would be to use XeLaTeX on your document.
Depending on the amount of math content, however, this might be more or
less difficult.
You will need to do three things to your source document to convert it
to XeLaTeX:
1) save the source as UTF-8
2) remove any fontenc/inputenc/mathptmx
3) add the following to your preamble:
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Times New Roman}
This will use the real Times New Roman font.
(This assumes you actually have Times New Roman installed as a regular
font in your system (i.e. you can use it in a Word document, e.g.)
Alan
Bob Tennent
Times is not the same as Times New Roman. The Times clone from URW
is pretty well indistinguishable from Times. But if your publisher
*really* wants Times New Roman, you can find support files here:
http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/psfonts/w-a-schmidt/
Note that the package
does not include the actual Type1 fonts, which are to be purchased
from Agfa-Monotype. In order to support separate design sizes and real
small capitals, the following Type1 fonts are required:
TimesNRMT
TimesNRExpertMT
TimesNRMT-Italic
TimesNRMT-Bold
TimesNRMT-BoldItalic
TimesNRSevenMT
TimesNRSevenMT-Italic
TimesNRSevenMT-Bold
TimesNRSevenMT-BoldItalic
TimesSmallTextMT
TimesSmallTextMT-Italic
TimesSmallTextMT-Bold
Bob T.
stefano
Bob and Alan, thanks for the suggestions. It turns out the publisher
will accept Nimbus, so I am off the hook. But here is what I really do
not understand:
I have produced some of the book's frontmatter (Title page, half-title
page, etc) with Scribus and included Scribus's pdf output into the
latex file with pdfpages.
When I examine the properties of pdfLatex's output I see that the
font panel lists Times New Roman (True Type) among the fonts used. It
obviously comea from Scribus, since, as I now understand, Latex
"Times" is actually Nimbus.
Now, why does Scribus use Times New Roman for Times while Latex
doesn't?
Is that because (more or less "freely available") True type fonts
cannot be used directly by Latex, while Latex would need the Type 1
version of Times New Roman, which (as Bob pointed out) is
commercial only?
Sorry for belaboring the point. I am really trying to understand how
fonts work with Latex and find the whole issue rather confusing.
Stefano
Tariq
XeLaTeX can use TrueType fonts but I have noticed that the output is
almost always poor quality unless there is OpenType niformation
embedded in the font. For example, ligatures (like fi, fl etc) are
never there and kerning is also terrible. I have been satisfied only
with otf fonts with XeLaTeX.
If you have Time New Roman as True Type fonts, you can use XeLaTeX.
Since it is the publisher you are trying to satisfy, it should work.
Good lick.
Tariq
Alan Munn
<c9169957-31c3-42ee...@t17g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>,
stefano <stefano...@gmail.com> wrote:
Because Scribus is a regular application which uses whatever fonts your
system has installed.
pdflatex doesn't have a way of using system fonts directly (but XeLaTeX
does as per my message); what that means is that to use these fonts with
pdflatex you need the relevant support files (as per Bob's message.)
>
> Is that because (more or less "freely available") True type fonts
> cannot be used directly by Latex, while Latex would need the Type 1
> version of Times New Roman, which (as Bob pointed out) is
> commercial only?
It's more about having the support files; there are tools to create the
relevant resources from any Open Type Font, but they're not for the
faint of heart. (See e.g.
<http://www.lcdf.org/~eddietwo/type/otftotfm.1.html> )
>
> Sorry for belaboring the point. I am really trying to understand how
> fonts work with Latex and find the whole issue rather confusing.
Unfortunately it is somewhat bewildering, especially since we are so
used to fonts just working in all other applications. This is one of
the big advantages of XeLaTeX.
Alan
>
> Stefano
Guenter Milde
> On May 10, 3:09 pm, Bob Tennent <B...@cs.queensu.ca> wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 May 2010 10:10:01 -0700 (PDT), stefano wrote:
> Bob and Alan, thanks for the suggestions. It turns out the publisher
> will accept Nimbus, so I am off the hook. But here is what I really do
> not understand:
> I have produced some of the book's frontmatter (Title page, half-title
> page, etc) with Scribus and included Scribus's pdf output into the
> latex file with pdfpages.
> When I examine the properties of pdfLatex's output I see that the
> font panel lists Times New Roman (True Type) among the fonts used. It
> obviously comea from Scribus, since, as I now understand, Latex
> "Times" is actually Nimbus.
> Now, why does Scribus use Times New Roman for Times while Latex
> doesn't?
This is already answered in the other repies...
You can, however explicitely select Nimbus Roman in Scribus to get
consistent font usage.
Günter
stefano
> On 2010-05-11, stefano wrote:
> > On May 10, 3:09 pm, Bob Tennent <B...@cs.queensu.ca> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 10 May 2010 10:10:01 -0700 (PDT), stefano wrote:
> > Bob and Alan, thanks for the suggestions. It turns out the publisher
> > will accept Nimbus, so I am off the hook. But here is what I really do
> > not understand:
> > I have produced some of the book's frontmatter (Title page, half-title
> > page, etc) with Scribus and included Scribus's pdf output into the
> > latex file with pdfpages.
> > When I examine the properties of pdfLatex's output I see that the
> > font panel lists Times New Roman (True Type) among the fonts used. It
> > obviously comea from Scribus, since, as I now understand, Latex
> > "Times" is actually Nimbus.
> > Now, why does Scribus use Times New Roman for Times while Latex
> > doesn't?
>
> This is already answered in the other repies...
>
Well, kind of. My question was about what prompted (or forced) the
developers of mathptmx to choose Nimbus as a replacement for Times. I
guess the answer I got is that they could get the Type 1 Nimbus font
and could not get the Times New Roman equivalent. However, it turns
out, that there are ways to make True Type fonts available to Latex.
So I can only speculate that the answer is one of the following:
- Licensing issues
I actually read the licensing info of the Times New Roman font that
came with my Linux installation, and it does seem rather restrictive
- Technology issues.
Perhaps the sw that makes tt fonts available to Latex was not
widely available when mathptmx was developed
- Quality issues.
Perhaps the Nimbus fonts (and the Termes one based on it) are better
(more extensive coverage, better kerning, more features, whatever)
than the Times New Roman ttf fonts that are to be found on everyone's
computer.
I have no idea which one is the correct answer. I did try converting
the Times New Roman font that I have with the autoinst script from the
fontools package (Thanks for the link, Alan ). The process was
actually rather painless, and it took me only 20 minutes to have the
book retypeset Times New Roman text. However, the font is decidedly
different from Nimbus. It is tighter kerned, and overall darker. It
may be a matter of taste, but the overall quality seems worse than
with Nimbus. So perhaps the quality answer is the correct one among
the three above (unless, as Bob pointed out, you acquire the full
range of Times New Roman Type 1 font from Monotype)
> You can, however explicitely select Nimbus Roman in Scribus to get
> consistent font usage.
Thanks for the suggestion. That's what I will do.
Thanks to everyone for the help. I think I know more about Times than
I ever wanted to. And I don't even like it.
Cheers,
Stefano
Bob Tennent
> Well, kind of. My question was about what prompted (or forced) the
> developers of mathptmx to choose Nimbus as a replacement for Times. I
> guess the answer I got is that they could get the Type 1 Nimbus font
> and could not get the Times New Roman equivalent. However, it turns
> out, that there are ways to make True Type fonts available to Latex.
> So I can only speculate that the answer is one of the following:
>
> - Licensing issues
> I actually read the licensing info of the Times New Roman font that
> came with my Linux installation, and it does seem rather restrictive
I very much doubt that Times New Roman fonts came with your Linux
installation. It's possible to get those fonts for Linux because those
are some of the "web fonts" that at one time Microsoft made available.
But re-distribution in any other form was not allowed. So perhaps your
Linux installation came with a script to get the fonts and install them.
mathptmx uses Times because the URW clones are GPLed and freely
distributable.
> Thanks to everyone for the help. I think I know more about Times than
> I ever wanted to. And I don't even like it.
I agree. It was designed to be as tight as possible (for use in narrow
newspaper columns). It's a complete mystery to me why it's so widely
used.
Bob T.
Philipp Stephani
> It's a complete mystery to me why it's so widely used.
It has been the standard font in MS Word for years, and most users stick
to the defaults. I wouldn't be surprised if the most widely used font
will be Calibri in a few years.
--
Change “LookInSig” to “tcalveu” to answer by mail.
stefano
> On Wed, 12 May 2010 06:58:48 -0700 (PDT), stefano wrote:
>
> > Well, kind of. My question was about what prompted (or forced) the
> > developers of mathptmx to choose Nimbus as a replacement for Times. I
> > guess the answer I got is that they could get the Type 1 Nimbus font
> > and could not get the Times New Roman equivalent. However, it turns
> > out, that there are ways to make True Type fonts available to Latex.
> > So I can only speculate that the answer is one of the following:
> >
> > - Licensing issues
> > I actually read the licensing info of the Times New Roman font that
> > came with my Linux installation, and it does seem rather restrictive
>
> I very much doubt that Times New Roman fonts came with your Linux
> installation. It's possible to get those fonts for Linux because those
> are some of the "web fonts" that at one time Microsoft made available.
> But re-distribution in any other form was not allowed. So perhaps your
> Linux installation came with a script to get the fonts and install them.
That's what I thought. But on my Ubuntu system, the fonts are provided
by a package called ttf-msttcorefonts, which is listed as a
recommended install
by OpenOffice. So perhaps OpenOffice, which is part of the basic
Ubuntu distribution, I believe, installed the fonts. Or some other
package may have it as a dependency.
>
> mathptmx uses Times because the URW clones are GPLed and freely
> distributable.
>
That makes perfect sense. What threw me off from the start is that the
Latex Companion says explicitly that the ptm font provided by
mathptmx is Adobe's repackaging of Linotype's redesign of Monotype's
Times New Roman. And the font's name itself (i.e. ptm) suggests it is
an Adobe font. The docs for PSNFSS are more ambiguous, I now realize,
even though they refer constantly to 'Times' and to Adobe.
I would not have been so puzzled if the docs had said:
"The Times and Mathptmx packages provide the Nimbus etc. font,
a freely-available GPL'ed clone of Times New Roman provided by URW.
Monotype's Times New Roman (the original source of the version of
Times provided by Microsoft and Adobe) is a commercial typeface. It
can be acquired at: ...... A Latex package including all the
supporting files (but not the font files themselves) is provided by
Walter Schmidt and is available at...." "
This is my current understanding of the situation, at least.
S.
Bob Tennent
>> I very much doubt that Times New Roman fonts came with your Linux
>> installation. It's possible to get those fonts for Linux because those
>> are some of the "web fonts" that at one time Microsoft made available.
>> But re-distribution in any other form was not allowed. So perhaps your
>> Linux installation came with a script to get the fonts and install them.
>
> That's what I thought. But on my Ubuntu system, the fonts are provided
> by a package called ttf-msttcorefonts
That package provides an *installer* for the "core" fonts. See what
happens when the download site that actually provides the fonts (in
accordance with the original license) is off-line:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=76655
Bob T.