Blue Sky Research and Computer Modern fonts

Last update: Wed Jul 8 10:35:50 1998
Fri Apr 14 07:27:28 2006

Up to notes on fonts

[Thanks go to Berthold Horn of Y&Y, and Barry Smith of Blue Sky Research, for the following historical background; the words are mostly Berthold's:]

Blue Sky Research made the first PostScript Type 3 versions of the Computer Modern fonts, about 1988, using a clever encoding scheme to represent the fonts with outlines defined by PostScript programs, rather than by bitmaps. This involved many hours of hand-work on the outlines produced by the tools used. The conversion to Type 1, ATM compatability and all the hinting was done by Y&Y under contract from Blue Sky Research, about 1992. This was a monster job: about 9600 glyphs.

The resulting fonts belonged to Blue Sky Research and had their copyright. About 1996, Y&Y bought the rights from Blue Sky Research to further revise and improve the fonts for their own products, and license them independently.

In the case of the AMS fonts in Type 1 format, all of the Euler font outlines were from Y&Y, the MSAM* and MSBM* and EUEX* outlines from Blue Sky Research, and all the Type 1 conversion, ATM compatability, and hinting by Y&Y. Those fonts were jointly owned by Blue Sky Research and Y&Y from the start.

Blue Sky Research
317 SW Alder Ave.
Portland, OR 97204
USA
Tel: +1 800 622 8398, +1 503 2229571
FAX: +1 503 222 1643
E-mail: sales@bluesky.com
URL: http://www.bluesky.com/

Although the Blue Sky Research Computer Modern fonts were initially licensed commercial products, in collaboration with the American Mathematical Society and Y&Y, these fonts have now been released for free public distribution. They are available from each of those three sources, as well as through the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network archives, and the many archives that mirror the CTAN collection.

Follow this link for a listing of the contents of the Blue Sky collection.