Re: CM fonts updated?

[Ulrik Vieth <vieth@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de>]

Walter Schmidt writes on tex-fonts:

> when reading the dante-FAQ  http://www.dante.de/faq/de-tex-faq/
> I just discovered a notice about minor updates having been applied
> to the CM fonts in august 1998.  Well, I cannot remember any 
> posting in CTAN-ANN...

Well, Knuth's announcement of updated files for TeX, MF, and CM fonts
was in August 1998, but updates to CTAN archives are usually delayed
(on purpose) so that last-minute bugs can be fixed before the buggy
versions get distributed widely.  IIRC, CTAN maintainers turned off
automatic mirroring of labrea.stanford.edu after the new files were
installed over there back in August, but some implementors (such as
Thomas Esser) have started distributing the new files regardless.
 
> According to the FAQ, the following notice should now be in all 
> .mf files:

> % THIS IS THE OFFICIAL COMPUTER MODERN SOURCE FILE cmr10.mf BY D E KNUTH.
> % IT MUST NOT BE MODIFIED IN ANY WAY UNLESS THE FILE NAME IS CHANGED!

> I have then fetched the complete directory /tex-archive/fonts/cm/mf
> from ftp.dante.de, only to see that all files were from 1995, they
> were identical to what I had already, and none had the above line.

> What's wrong here?

Obviously, CTAN maintainers have forgotten to either resume mirroring
labrea.stanford.edu or installing the new files, since Knuth never
send out specific instructions to start distributing the new files.
Since half a year has passed without any further bug reports, I guess
it would be safe to do so.

Cheers, Ulrik.


P.S.  It was me who suggested updating that passage of the de-tex-faq.