About the Computer Modern Type 1 fonts
They are high-quality Adobe Type 1 renditions of Donald Knuth's Computer
Modern fonts (i.e. the default TeX fonts). Type 1 fonts are ``outline''
fonts and hence scaleable. (By contrast the fonts traditionally used for
previewing and printing with TeX (PK fonts) are bitmaps, produced to a
specified resolution.) These fonts were made by Blue Sky Research and
Y&Y, who then transferred copyright to the American Mathematical Society.
The fonts were made publicly available in early 1997. The entire set of
Computer Modern pfb (postscript font binary) files takes up about 2.5 MB
of disk space.
That depends on your situation. Here are some scenarios.
- You like to preview with dviwin, and you print to a 300dpi
printer. In that case you are not going to see much advantage. Dviwin
requires PK bitmap fonts, and you might as well use these for printing
too, if you are printing at the same resolution. On the other hand you
may find the type 1 fonts useful in conjunction with dvips if you want to
produce resolution-independent postscript files (or PDF files) for
distributing your TeX document to other people. If someone with a 1200dpi
printer downloads one of your postscript files containing type 1 fonts, the
fonts will appear at her printer at its full resolution. In addition, you
can make the type 1 fonts available to other Windows applications
(though you're on your own here, this is not automated as part of the
emtexgi package). Thus, for instance, you could use Computer Modern fonts
in an Excel graph that you plan to include in a TeX document.
- You like to preview using dviwin, but you typically print to a
printer with a resolution of 600dpi or higher. In this case the CM
type 1 fonts may be quite useful. Besides the uses noted above, you will
not have to make PK fonts at two resolutions (one for previewing and one
for printing). Even though the creation of PK files from the Metafont
source files is automated, it can take a while. And if your office or
department switches, say, from a 600dpi printer to a 1200dpi printer, you
won't have to remake any bitmap fonts.
- You have a fast machine with a high-resolution display and you
like to preview TeX documents by making postscript files and using
Ghostview. In this case you can dispense with PK fonts altogether,
using the type 1 fonts for both previewing and printing.
Probably not -- only if you are operating under the last scenario
noted above (i.e. you don't need/want to use dviwin for previewing).
But the type 1 fonts do make high-resolution PK fonts redundant, if you
print via dvips.
If you are installing emtexgi from scratch, download cmps-pc.zip,
bluesky.bat and config.bsr along with the other files you
want, and follow the general instructions for installation. To install
them as an add-on, download the above-mentioned files plus the latest
version of emtexgi.zip. Please see the update page for details.