More Readable Computer Modern
Documents created using the LaTeX typesetting system use the Computer Modern font family by default. Although many other options exist (and with the introduction of XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX any OpenType font can be used as well), many scientists are still fond of the good old Computer Modern.
This is what a text set in Computer Modern looks like (compiled with LuaLaTeX):
The world was different in 1986 when Donald Knuth, the creator of TeX, originally designed the font family. Documents were printed, not read on a computer screen. Perhaps the printer Knuth used produced somewhat thicker lines, so he decided to compensate for it by making the digital version a little thinner.
Nowadays, we often read text on a screen. There, you may notice that text set in Computer Modern is rather thin and sometimes difficult to read. Fortunately, there are derivatives that preserve its letterforms while having slightly increased weight, so they are easier to read.
New Computer Modern
If you use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX (which support OpenType fonts), you should use New Computer Modern. Not only it adds a Book weight, which is slightly bolder than the Regular (but still lighter than Bold), but it also adds many missing glyphs and greatly expands language support.
The simplest way to use the font is with the fontsetup package:
\usepackage[default]{fontsetup}In the example below, you should notice that the text has an ever so slightly increased weight:
Because the font is distributed in the OpenType format, you can download the font files and use them even outside of LaTeX.
MLModern
With pdfLaTeX you must use the mlmodern package:
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{mlmodern}This typeface is even bolder than New Computer Modern, as you can see in the following example:
Beware that this font does not contain accented Latin characters, so you can’t use it with XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX if you want to write in languages that require them.