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From: Quadibloc on 1 Nov 2009 11:01
Back in the old days of hot metal typesetting, mathematics was typeset
either with foundry type or with Monotype equipment. (Some desperate
people resorted to the Varityper, obtaining results of better quality
than using the Symbol element on a Selectric, but that was about all
that could be said for it.)

In 1952, or perhaps earlier, the Lanston Monotype company in the U.S.
developed a system of what came to be known as 4-line mathematics.
This used a font similar to Modern No. 7, and it had the weakness of
trying to do one thing too many - the horizontal line which is used in
expressing the ratio of two formulas was placed on the type slugs of
the bottom formula, so tiny irregularities and breaks would be visible
in it.

Some years later, the Monotype Corporation in the U.K. developed its
version of 4-line mathematics. Since Modern No. 7 was a font belonging
to the general group of Scotch Roman fonts, even though it was one of
the better ones, it looked old and tired, reminding people of the 19th
century era of typography when really awful versions of Scotch Roman
were used for a major proportion of all English-language printing. So
Monotype did more than just design a new mechanism for its typesetting
machines, and perhaps make new versions of its matrices where some
characters were re-positioned vertically. It chose to provide the
ability to typeset mathematics in the most popular font of the day,
Times Roman.

They needed to make alternate versions of italic g, v, and w, and, in
fact, for various reasons ended up redrawing the entire font.

Of course, now, this is all ancient history. But Times Roman is still
the most popular typeface. TEX is often used with Donald Knuth's
Computer Modern typeface, which was inspired by Modern No. 7, but
which does, at least to my eyes, "look funny" in a way that Modern No.
7 didn't. As an accomplished mathematician, it is not really any shame
that he isn't also a Hermann Zapf (or a Victor Lardent, or a W. A.
Dwiggins, or a Frederick Goudy...).

Anyways, today pretty well all the major word processors have equation
editors. Lotus Smart Suite even came with its own mathematics fonts.
Generally, they tend to use Times Roman for math by default, but I
suspect that they're not licensing Times series 569, and thus one's
italic "v"s will get confused with nu.

While Times Roman is the most popular typeface today, there are other
typefaces that are very popular and widely used for text matter:

Garamond
Baskerville
Caledonia
Century Expanded

and, as it happens, since Century Expanded is a "modern" typeface
(like Bodoni and Modern No. 7) its italics already have the
appropriate properties for mathematical typesetting without the need
to make a new set. (Century Expanded is still used a lot because while
it may be a modern typeface, it is definitely _not_ a Scotch Roman.)

I know that at least one word processor does let you choose which
typeface it will use for normal letters when making equations, and so
if the contrast between Latin letters in Century Expanded and Greek
ones in Times Roman is not too glaring, this _is_ a real option.

John Savard
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