# Use TeX fonts by default even if stix fonts are installed

At my school pc, they have stix fonts installed. Mathjax by default uses stix fonts if they are installed. The problem is, they look really ugly imho:

Here is an screen shot of the stix font: http://snag.gy/mz3vk.jpg

And here a screenshot of the TeX fonts which are used if stix is not installed: http://snag.gy/iQZ1f.jpg

I think that most people prefer the tex like fonts above the stix font. Just because people are used to those computer modern roman like fonts in latex. It is really easy to tell mathjax to use TeX fonts by default, even if stix fonts are installed. You only need to edit this code availableFonts: ["STIX","TeX"] to this code availableFonts: ["TeX"].

• Where does that code fragment appear? – Antonio Vargas Oct 28 '13 at 14:57
• @AntonioVargas Here. – Lord_Farin Oct 28 '13 at 14:59
• I used ctrl+F to try to find the world availableFonts in the source code for that answer but it doesn't seem to be there. Could you be more specific? – Antonio Vargas Oct 28 '13 at 15:04
• @AntonioVargas If I check the source of math.stackexchange.com then this code appears at line 32. You should be able to find it with crt+f I think. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 15:45
• Who downvoted and why ? – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 15:46
• I, because I disagree. I consciously use STIX because it uniformises the rendering of TeX over the several browsers I use. – Lord_Farin Oct 28 '13 at 17:20
• I misunderstood -- I thought there was a piece of code that I, personally, could change to obtain what you want. To clarify, are you asking StackExchange to modify their own html code as per your suggestion? – Antonio Vargas Oct 28 '13 at 17:38
• @Lord_Farin I don't understand. Are you saying that with STIX fonts installed all browser look the same, and without stix fonts installed, some browsers look different ? For me, without stix fonts installed, mathjax looks exactly the same in IE10,chrome,firefox or opera. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 18:51
• @AntonioVargas Yes, I'm asking StackExchange to modify their own code. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 18:55
• I also downvoted, for almost the same reason as @Lord_Farin. I don't use the STIX fonts, and I dislike them. But I do feel that there is a point to using local fonts over webfonts. This is even more the case with the release of MJ 2.3 which added several other webfonts. – Asaf Karagila Oct 28 '13 at 19:51
• @AsafKaragila What is the the point of using local fonts over webfonts ? Is this because it loads faster ? – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 20:27
• @AsafKaragila I've been experimenting a bit. After I installed the STIX fonts locally, all the math is in a STIX font at MSE. After that I installed the mathjax fonts locally from here: mathjax.org/download. It seems like that if both STIX and TeX fonts are installed locally, stackexchange prefers the local TeX font above the local STIX font. So for people that are intrested in installing the font locally, you could also choose installing the TeX font locally. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 20:33
• I will ask if my university can install those fonts as well, then my issue would be solved. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 20:44
• @Kasper Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And I probably wouldn't have bothered if the rendering in Firefox (or Chrome, can't remember) wasn't so ugly (at least when I made this choice, one or two years back). – Lord_Farin Oct 28 '13 at 21:44
• @Lord_Farin I think that maybe 2 years ago some browsers didn't support webfonts. For browsers that don't support webfonts, mathjax uses really ugly imagefonts if there is no local math font available. New version of firefox/chrome/IE/opera support webfonts now. – Kasper Oct 28 '13 at 21:52