Using the Latin Modern fonts

The lm fonts are an exciting addition to the armoury of the (La)TeX 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 teTeX 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 MiKTeX 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 trees — fonts, 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 pdfLaTeX, dvips, dvipdfm/dvipdfmx, your previewers and Type 1-to-PK conversion programs, by

On a teTeX 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 teTeX version 2.0 (or later), execute the command
```
 updmap --enable Map lm.map
```
On a MiKTeX 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 MiKTeX system, version 2.2 or later, update updmap.cfg as described in the MiKTeX online documentation. Then execute the command initexmf --mkmaps, and the job is done.

To use the fonts in a LaTeX document, you should \usepackage{lmodern} this will make the fonts the default for all three LaTeX 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.

FAQ ID: Q-uselmfonts