[OS X TeX] cmss vs. \sfdefault font question

[Gary L. Gray]

On Aug 7, 2006, at 7:25 PM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 8 août 06 à 01:09, Gary L. Gray a écrit :
>
>> Something came up today that has me perplexed. I have a document  
>> that I created in January that uses:
>>
>> \renewcommand{\familydefault}{cmss}
>>
>> to make everything sans serif. When typeset in January, it looked  
>> great and all nice Postscript fonts were used. I just tried  
>> typesetting it and it took forever as mf had to create all the  
>> fonts. When it was done, it looked terrible (all bitmapped fonts).  
>> I did a quick search on the list and found this command:
>>
>> \renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
>>
>> which worked perfectly.
>>
>> My question is, what in LaTeX has changed? Why did cmss work 7  
>> months ago and why does it not work now?
>
> Hi Gary,
>
> Is this all on the same computer?

Yes.

> IIRC you got a MacBook Pro earlier this year, is it possible that  
> cmss was working on your former computer and is no longer working  
> on your current computer? If so, that would be a configuration  
> problem.

It is interesting that you should mention this. The typesetting in  
January was on my previous machine.

> Both commands yield the same output on my setup. I'm not sure  
> what's the TeX code to get the definition of a command written to  
> the log (and I've no TeXbook around), could it be \the\sfdefault?  
> What does it yield for you? Also, doesn't (for example) /usr/local/ 
> teTeX/share/texmf.local/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map contain  
> lines like:
>
> cmss10 CMSS10 <cmss10.pfb

It does. I just noticed that I have the following directories:

~/Library/texmf/fonts/map/dvipdfm/updmap
~/Library/texmf/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap
~/Library/texmf/fonts/map/dvips/updmap

I have deleted them, but that didn't change anything.

> As just pointed out by Herb Schultz as I'm writing this, it might  
> also be a matter of T1 vs. OT1 vs. LY1 encodings, of the presence  
> or not of CM-Super, of use or not of the lmodern package, etc.

As I responded to Herb, I am loading:

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{textcomp}

I recalled that I had not installed CM-Super when I moved to the new  
machine. I just installed it and it sort of fixed the problem.  
Interestingly, the fonts are a little different between the version  
in which I use:

\renewcommand{\familydefault}{cmss}

and when I use:

\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

I have posted them (including .log files) for you to look at:

http://www.esm.psu.edu/faculty/gray/misc/cmss.zip
http://www.esm.psu.edu/faculty/gray/misc/sfdefault.zip

Does this help?

Thank you.

-- Gary------------------------- Info --------------------------
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