Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!labrea!polya!weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU
From: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: dvi2ps
Message-ID: <3919@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Sep 88 05:58:57 GMT
References: <29488@bbn.COM> <3909@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
Sender: news@polya.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Joe Weening)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 30
In-reply-to: ehrlich@blitz (Dan Ehrlich)

In article <3909@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>, ehrlich@blitz (Dan Ehrlich) writes:
>In article <29488@bbn.COM> jzavgren@bbn.com (John Zavgren) writes:
>>When I run [dvi2ps] it tries to open nonexistent font files that have
>>rather odd-sounding names, for example, amsy10.1000. Frankly, I'm
>>stymied. Can anyone tell me what going on?
>
>The am* font family are the American Mathematical Society fonts.  They are
>available from AMS in Rhode Island.  If you don't want to spend any money
>you should be able to change all of the references to the am fonts to the
>freely distributed cm (Computer Modern) fonts that come with TeX.

Not quite right.  The AM fonts are the "Almost" Computer Modern fonts
produced by Don Knuth at Stanford in 1983 with the old version of
Metafont, as a stopgap until the real CM fonts were designed in
1985-86.  They have nothing to do with the AMS.  (You are probably
thinking of the MSXM, MSYM and Cyrillic fonts distributed by the AMS.)

It is true, though, that you can replace almost all AM fonts by the
corresponding fonts with CM names.  (There are about 4 or so
exceptions whose names were changed slightly.)  Many of the character
widths changed, however, so you cannot just substitute the fonts in an
existing DVI file; you should make the change in the TeX source and
run it through TeX again.

I hope that everyone who is still using AM fonts for any purpose will
find the time to convert as soon as possible.  The AM fonts are
obsolete and were never intended to last beyond 1986.  (Though the
script letters in AMSY10 do look better than CMSY10, I must agree.)
-- 
Joe Weening                                Computer Science Dept.
weening@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU          Stanford University