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From: hanche@imf.unit.no (Harald Hanche-Olsen)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: AmSTeX fonts: old vs. new
Message-ID: <HANCHE.90Dec6201838@hufsa.imf.unit.no>
Date: 6 Dec 90 19:18:38 GMT
References: <40762@ut-emx.uucp>
Sender: news@ugle.unit.no
Organization: The Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Lines: 23
In-Reply-To: young@emx.utexas.edu's message of 6 Dec 90 00:12:32 GMT

In article <40762@ut-emx.uucp> young@emx.utexas.edu (Young U. Ryu) writes:

   Can anybody tell me the difference
   between (msxm, mxym) and (msam, msbm)?
   (msxm, mxym) are old AmSTeX fonts,
   (msam, msbm) are new AmSTeX fonts.

One difference is that the old ones were written in an earlier version
of the METAFONT language and are therefore impossible to rebuild for
most of us.  With the new ones, source code is available and anyone
who has METAFONT can build them.  They may also have been fine tuned
and even changed around a bit; I don't know.

Actually, that is a very good question.  We keep the msxm and msym
fonts around for the sole reason that we sometimes get TeX files
written for AMS-TeX version 1.x, which requires them.  Could we
perhaps get rid of them by a simple text substitution in the old
amstex.tex file?  Does anybody know??

- Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@imf.unit.no>
  Division of Mathematical Sciences
  The Norwegian Institute of Technology
  N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY