The Doublestroke Font V1.

111
Olaf Kummer
November 29, 2006

1 Introduction
This font is useful for typesetting the mathematical symbols for the natural
numbers (N), whole numbers (Z), rational numbers (Q), real numbers (R),
complex numbers (C), and a couple of others which are sometimes needed.
The easiest possibility to represent these sets using TEX is to use boldface,
where you get N after entering $\mathbf{N}$.
Then one can assemble the glyphs from other ones. For example the expres-
sion $\mathrm{I\!N}$ yields IN.
The calligraphic symbol N generated by $\mathcal{N}$ is another option.
But if none of the above suits your needs or personal taste, you should use
a special font. These fonts are known as the blackboard bold fonts. There is a
well-known font distributed by the AMS as amsyb, but the fonts bbold by Alain
Jeffery and bbm by Gilles F. Robert are viable options, too.
And there is this font, too, which was designed to be as similar to the
Computer Modern family of fonts by Donald E. Knuth as possible. Which of
these options you prefer is a matter of personal taste, so read on to find out
whether you like this font.

2 License
You may use and distribute these fonts as you like. You may modify these
fonts as long as you do not rename the files to one of those names that Donald
E. Knuth chose for the Computer Modern fonts. (And seriously, who would
want to do that?)

3 Installation
Here are the instructions to install the doublestroke package.

1. If a previous version of this font is installed, remove all the files, especially
the font files that were generated by Metafont after the first installation.

2. Depending on how you obtained this package it might be necessary to

unpack/uncompress an archive. Now the files

dsdoc.dvi dsrom12.pfb dsss10.mf dsss8.tfm

dsdoc.ps dsrom12.tfm dsss10.pfb dstroke.map

1
 dsdoc.tex dsrom8.mf dsss10.tfm readme
dsfont.sty dsrom8.pfb dsss12.mf Udsrom.fd
dsrom10.mf dsrom8.tfm dsss12.pfb Udsss.fd
dsrom10.pfb dsrom.mf dsss12.tfm
dsrom10.tfm dsromo.mf dsss8.mf
dsrom12.mf dsromu.mf dsss8.pfb

should be present.

3. Make sure that you have TEX, LATEX (with NFSS), and Metafont installed.
Make sure that cmbase.mf is accessible by Metafont.

4. Move the files to their destination.

The files are and are needed by
*.tfm font metric files TEX
*.fd font defintions TEX
*.sty style files TEX
*.mf Metafontsources Metafont
*.pfb PostScript fonts TEX
*.map font map files dvips, PDFTEX
The exact location where the files belong depends on your installation. As
a first approximation, install them near other files with the same extension.
Unlike previous versions of this font, no pregenerated fonts at 300 dpi are
included, because these fonts should always be generated with the proper
Metafont mode. The metric files are included, however, because they do
not depend on the printer.

5. Verify the installation by generating this documentation file from its source
dsdoc.tex. The resulting file dsdoc.dvi should be identical to this text.

6. If you want to use the PostScript fonts, you have to make them known to
dvips and/or PDFTEX. The details of this process depend on your system
installation. For example, if you are working in a Unix-style environment
with a recent TEX installation, you can configure dvips by setting the
environment variable DVIPSRC to point to a configuration file myconfig,
which would look as follows:

p +dstroke.map

This will tell dvips to load the font map file. PDFTEX looks for a config-
uration file called pdftex.cfg, into which you should put the line

map +dstroke.map

for it to find the PostScript fonts.

Note that for this to work, all files need to be put into their appropriate
places. If you are unsure about where to put things, consult your system
administrator or the manual of your TEX system.

2
 You have probably done all of the above, because you are reading this doc-
umentation. But maybe you got this documentation from somewhere else and
ran into trouble during the installation. In this case try the following:

• If LATEX complains about a missing input file, check whether the files *.fd
and *.sty are accessible and readable.
• If LATEX complains about a missing font, check the placement of the files
*.tfm.
• If LATEX issues strange errors, you might have an old version of LATEX
or NFSS. Try using the fonts with low-level font commands instead of
dsfont.sty and check the next item, too.
• If LATEX issues strange errors, the files might have been corrupted during
transmission. Conversions of CR, LF, and so on might cause this problem.
• If the previewer or the printer driver complains about missing fonts and
does not automatically call Metafont to generate these font, either adapt
your installation or generate the fonts by hand. Depending on your in-
stallation you must run something like

mf ’\mode=localfont; input dsrom10’

for each of the fonts.

• If Metafont is called and complains about missing source files, check
whether these (*.mf) are placed correctly.
• If Metafont is called and complains about strange paths or about paths
that do not intersect, you are probably generating the font at a lower
resolution than 100 dpi. There is little you can do except ignoring the
errors or telling Metafont to do so. Please report such errors only if they
occur at resolutions above 100 dpi.
• If the previewer or the printer driver complains about missing characters,
check whether you have deleted all files from previous versions of this font.
• If the previewer or the printer driver complains about a checksum error,
check whether you have deleted all files from previous versions of this font.

If that does not help and your friendly TEXnician is unavailable, drop me a
mail. I will try to help you, if time permits.

4 Usage
You can use the fonts with all versions of TEX and LATEX, if you apply the
low-level command \font. For example we can write
\font\dsrom=dsrom10
$$\hbox{\dsrom N}=\{0,1,2,\ldots\}$$
$$\hbox{\dsrom ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}$$
\bye

3
to obtain
N = {0, 1, 2, . . .}
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
using TEX alone. If LATEX and NFSS are available as suggested in the installation
section, you can use the style dsfont for an easier and more flexible approach.
The style provides a single command \mathds which can be used in math mode
to typeset a doublestroke symbol. It use is similar to that of \mathbb from the
AMS package. For example

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{dsfont}
\begin{document}
\[\mathds{N}=\{0,1,2,\ldots\}\]
\[\mathds{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}\]
\end{document}

will again result in

N = {0, 1, 2, . . .}
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
as we have already done in TEX. The uppercase letters shown here are the most
common, but there are a few others in use.

\[\mathds{1}\;\mathds{h}\;\mathds{k}\]

results in
1hk
Why are the other lowercase letters and numerals missing? Well, they would
be ugly if treated in the same way as the uppercase letters. Hence I considered
the beauty of each individual letter more important than the completeness of
the whole character set. Using \mathds{a} we can get the letter a. This is the
way the letter A looked in previous versions of this font. It is provided in case
somebody likes the old version better. The two other letters V and W have
changed significantly, too, but there will be nobody who prefers the old glyphs,
I think.
Let us look at some examples.
\[\mathds{N}\subset\mathds{Z}\subset\mathds{Q}
\subset\mathds{R}\subset\mathds{C}\]
\[\{a_i\}_{i\in\mathds{N}}\textrm{~where~}a_i\in\mathds{C}\]
\[\forall x\in\mathds{X}:\exists s\in\mathds{S}:
x\circ t\in\mathds{T}^\mathds{1}\]

After running LATEX we get

N⊂Z⊂Q⊂R⊂C

(ai )i∈N where ai ∈ R

∀x ∈ X : ∃s ∈ S : x ◦ s ∈ T1

4
We can see that the font can occur in subscripts or superscripts without any
problems. The last formula shows the possibility to use the doublestroke font
for custom defined objects. Some caution is required here. Usually it is best to
stick to those symbols whose usage is common, like the natural numbers N etc.
But there are reasons to use own glyphs, of course.
Some people prefer a sans serif doublestroke font. This can be accomplished
by a minimal change of the TEX source.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[sans]{dsfont}
\begin{document}
\[\mathds{N}=\{0,1,2,\ldots\}\]
\[\mathds{ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}\]
\end{document}

Did you spot the change? The result is

N = {0, 1, 2, . . .}

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
In this document I had to use both fonts for example purposes. Do not do
this at home, unless you really know why. I discourage the simultaneous use of
serif and sans serif doublestroke fonts in a single document, because it results
in confused readers.

5 Changes
Changes in Version 1.0
• The characters 1, h, and k were added.

• The characters A, V, and W were completely redone.

• For several characters the size of the serifs was adjusted.

• Several characters were made more robust at low resolutions. In order to

achieve this goal, the appearance of the letter S had to be changed for
some extreme parameter settings.

• The sans serif version of the font was added. The metaness required to
generate a sans serif font was already present in the earlier version. The
style file was rewritten to allow a choice between the two fonts.

• 8-point fonts for subscripts were added.

• The pregenerated fonts were removed from the distribution.

• This document was written.

Changes in Version 1.1

• The license section was added.

5
Changes in Version 1.11
• Documentation bugs were corrected

Changes in Version 1.111

• PostScript versions of the fonts were added. These were generated from
the Metafont sources using the mftrace program by Han-Wen Nienhuys.

6 Thanks
Thanks go to D. E. Knuth who gave TEX, Metafont, and Computer Modern
to the world. Marco Kuhlmann added the PostScript version of the fonts and
commented on the installation process. Jürgen Vollmer provided some ideas
that were used in this documentation file. Han-Wen Nienhuys created mftrace,
which was required for creating PostScript versions of this font. Reinhard Zierke
did not only provide the most complete TEX installation I can imagine, but also
motivated this improved version of the font.