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I need it to make posters with Scribus. I got the hint that use the Computer Modern Font. However, I am not sure if the newest OSX has it, where could I get it from?

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OS X has never included Computer Modern as standard, only as part of the X11 system. The font was originally created by Donald Knuth using metafont so that he had a good font for his typesetting system, Tex, that he wrote to typeset his books on programming.

The modern versions were created to provide a good quality font for the X11/Tex project.

The Computer Modern home page is here: http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/ Note that these are the version with the "Blue Sky" font hinting that almost everyone uses these days rather than the Knuth originals.

You will want the "otf" (Open Type Font) file which at the time of writing is ftp://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/pub/Font/cm_unicode/cm-unicode-0.6.3a-otf.tar.gz

If you open the application Font Book you can have a look at the fonts installed on the System and install new ones using drag and drop.

On a final note, if you arrive at this answer and are going to be doing serious typesetting with Computer Modern you may wish to install the entire American Mathematical Society AMSFonts package available here - it's even packed as a TEXMF directory structure if that is of use to you. Otherwise it contains Postscript fonts well down in the folder hierarchy that can be easily installed on a Mac. It includes other useful fonts and extensions to the basic Computer Modern set. All are free under the SIL Font License.

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  • I have X11 in my OSX. Does this mean that I have too the Computer Modern font as standard? – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jan 20 '14 at 10:16
  • Some X11 installs use it and some don't. Back in the day when Apple shipped an X11 they included it as Apple have always loved good type design. – Tony Williams Jan 20 '14 at 10:21
  • How can you check if your system have this font? – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jan 20 '14 at 10:22
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    You probably can't use the X11 fonts in the normal System anyway. Scribus won't use them. – Tony Williams Jan 20 '14 at 12:16
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    Do you see the fonts in Font Book - they are named CMU something. If you can't see them in Font Book then download and install them from the FTP link above. – Tony Williams Jan 20 '14 at 19:54
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For the users that are more comfortable with using Terminal. You can also install it through Brew.

brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts
brew cask install font-computer-modern
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  • Welcome to Apple StackExchange! - - Can you please explain how your answer differ from Tony's answer? In which cases is your answer needed? – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Aug 6 '17 at 10:25
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    Leo - this answer is indeed quicker and easier for those who use the terminal. (i.e. programmers). – Dermot Harnett Jan 14 '19 at 16:39
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    This is now brew tap homebrew/cask-fonts. – Jongwook Choi Oct 8 '19 at 2:05

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