Y&Y MathTime fonts

[Karl Berry]

Hi again,

Thanks for all the responses on Y&Y so far (the more the merrier).  I'll
write a bit more in a few days, but I thought it might be useful to
bring up one particular topic now: the MathTime fonts.

I asked Mike Spivak (their creator, who retained ownership) about the
possibility of the fonts being distributed again (commercially).  He
replied that the new version of MathTime (Pro) being distributed by PCTeX
  http://pctex.com/additional.html#mathtime

is actually far superior, for this reason: he went back to Monotype and
got permission to use the original letterforms, cut at the 5pt and 7pt
sizes.  So instead of the fonts being linearly scaled down, MathTime Pro
is based on actual designs at those sizes.

So he thought it would be best for older versions to fade away.

I have heard that there have been problems integrating the PCTeX fonts
into other TeX installations in the past.  Also, apparently they require
virtual fonts, so they can't be used with Y&Y as it stands now.

Mike might be open (of course I cannot speak for him) to reviving the
original MathTime given enough user demand, or reports of specific
problems with the new version -- or at least to fixing the new version.

In this regard, I should also mention the mathptm fonts and LaTeX
package, which are freely available and included in all the major free
TeX distributions.  They are not, to my knowledge, a complete
replacement for MathTime (old or new) but they are available now, and
are entirely outline-based, etc.

There's also new and extended free versions of Palatino, among others.
I put a brief summary of the current font situation at
http://tug.org/fonts.

Regards,
karl