🚀 go-pugleaf

martin weigele (comp.text.tex, 13 august 1992) asks where the *old*
ams symbol fonts (msx/msy) might be available, or for a 1:1 replacement.

i can't help you with the oldies, but the fonts msa/msb are very
close to 1:1 replacements.  there are a few differences:
 - several symbols, essentially duplicates of symbols already
   existing in cm* fonts, were removed
 - a few new symbols were inserted in cells that were empty in msx/y
 - the style of the blackboard bold in msy has been changed from
   "stick figure" to "inline", for which the design is based on the
   times model
for all symbols (including blackboard bold) that made the transition,
the locations are the same and the old control sequence names will
work, although the supported method of accessing blackboard bold has
changed from one \cs per letter to \Bbb followed by the intended
letter as an argument, to save memory space.

i should note that there has been some controversy over the change
to blackboard bold.  some mathematicians and tex users consider it
an improvement in the appearance of these symbols; others prefer the
"old" style, on the ground that it more closely resembles what a
mathematician writes on the blackboard.  in either case, no one has,
to my knowledge, complained that it is unclear or ambiguous.  thus,
like the controversy over computer modern, the judgments seem mainly
subjective -- matters of personal preference.

on the other hand, if it is a matter of creating new copy to be
patched into a corrected reprint of an existing book, the new
blackboard bold would not match.  since the ams fonts were
created for old metafont and can't be processed with the current
program, even having the old mf code isn't very useful.  i believe
i have heard that someone extracted the old blackboard bold and
updated it or created new shape descriptions and that the mf files
for this exist somewhere for ftp.  but i don't know where.

the msa/msb fonts should be ftp-able from the stuttgart archive,
  ftp.uni-stuttgart.de
in the areas soft/tex/ams/tfm-files and .../ams/amsfonts/pk-files
for the tfm and pk files or .../ams/amsfonts/sources/symbols for
the mf files.
						-- bb