Using the Latin Modern fonts#

The lm fonts are an exciting addition to the armoury of the user : high quality outlines of fonts that were until recently difficult to obtain, all in a free and relatively compact package. However, the spartan information file that comes with the fonts remarks « It is presumed that a potential user knows what to do with all these files ». This answer aims to fill in the requirements : the job is really not terribly difficult.

Note that distributions, from version 3.0, already have the lm fonts : all you need do is use them. The fonts may also be installed via the package manager, in a current system. The remainder of this answer, then, is for people who don’t use such systems.

The font (and related) files appear on CTAN as a set of single-entry TDS treesfonts, dvips, tex and doc. The doc subtree really need not be copied (it’s really a pair of sample files), but copy the other three into your existing Local $TEXMF tree, and update the filename database.

Now, incorporate the fonts in the set searched by dvips, dvipdfm/dvipdfmx, your previewers and Type 1-to-PK conversion programs, by

  • On a system earlier than version 2.0, edit the file $TEXMF/dvips/config/updmap and insert an absolute path for the lm.map just after the line that starts extra_modules=" (and before the closing quotes).

  • On a version 2.0 (or later), execute the command updmap --enable Map lm.map.

  • On a system earlier than version 2.2, the « Refresh filename database » operation, which you performed after installing files, also updates the system’s « PostScript resources database ».

  • On a system, version 2.2 or later, update updmap.cfg as described in the online documentation.

To use the fonts in a document, you should \usepackage{lmodern} this will make the fonts the default for all three font families (« roman », « sans-serif » and « typewriter). You also need \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} for text, and \usepackage{textcomp} if you want to use any of the TS1-encoding symbols. There is no support for using fonts according to the OT1 encoding.