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I wrote a book five years ago using the newtx package.

Now I want to make some corrections and recompile the document. However, this recompiled document is very different from the original. It seems that the letter spacing of all the fonts and the size of the sans serif fonts have increased considerably.

I looked in the manual, and there is text mentioning changes to spacing, but it's unclear when these changes were made. I also found reference to the option tighter, but this option makes the spacing smaller than the original.

Is there any way to restore the situation from five years ago or at least reduce the impact of the change?

MWE

\documentclass[11pt]{scrbook}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\setkomafont{subsection}{\fontsize{19pt}{19pt}\selectfont\normalfont\sffamily}
\usepackage[paperwidth=200mm,paperheight=240mm,top=30mm,bottom=20mm,inner=25mm,outer=45mm,marginparsep=7mm,marginparwidth=28mm,headsep=14mm,headheight=6mm]{geometry}


\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage[cmintegrals,slantedGreek,varg]{newtxmath}


\makeatletter


\begin{document}


\subsection{Some short text that brakes differently now}


Plin koji je dovoljno rijedak da možemo zanemariti privlačne sile izmedu čestica plina (molekula, atoma) nazivamo \textbf{idealni plin}.  Za idealni plin vrijedi \textbf{jednadžba idealnog plina}.


\end{document}

In 2019: enter image description here

Now: enter image description here

Pygmalion
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  • If you want to reproduce the old results, maybe try an old texlive version? See https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/258478/tex-archaeology-installing-historic-old-tex-live-releases – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Feb 06 '24 at 20:53
  • well at always: provide a small but complete example. There are people here who have older texsystems which can be used to test your issue (and you can try it on overleaf too). – Ulrike Fischer Feb 07 '24 at 09:30
  • @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Hello, I found newtx*.tar.xz files in the archive folder of texlive2019-20190410.iso. How can I use those files in my MiKTeX? Can I use those old files only for this one project? – Pygmalion Feb 07 '24 at 16:10
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    @Pygmalion I meant that you could install a complete tex distribution from a few years ago. – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Feb 07 '24 at 16:12
  • @UlrikeFischer Hello, the problem is I just cannot do that. Of course I could just create some short text and compile it in new MiKTeX, but maybe this short text will be just the same in the older system. I cannot know that, I don't have access to an older system. – Pygmalion Feb 07 '24 at 16:13
  • @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz You mean like making another MiKTeX installation with old tex distribution on the same computer? Is that possible? Are there any instructions how to do that? – Pygmalion Feb 07 '24 at 16:14
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    @Pygmalion I would use texlive. Each year of texlive is pretty much independent, so one can have them in parallel without any problems. – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Feb 07 '24 at 16:16
  • @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz I see... I am still a little hesitant to switch to texlive. My workspace is optimised for working with MiKTeX, with various macros in Notepad++. I am not sure if all that would work in texlive and how long it would take me to translate all those macros for a new system. – Pygmalion Feb 07 '24 at 16:27
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    you should be able to find a paragraph that looks different now that we can test. And you can always test first on overleaf. There you have various texlive versions. – Ulrike Fischer Feb 07 '24 at 16:30
  • @UlrikeFischer Took me a huge amount of time, but I finally got MWE. – Pygmalion Feb 07 '24 at 22:19
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    You can get the same sans serif font size by adding the option helvratio=0.9 (the default has changed). But I'm afraid you won't get your Times clone back, because in the meantime the clone is no longer based on the TX fonts, but on TeX Gyre Termes. – egreg Feb 07 '24 at 23:30
  • @egreg Thanks, that was useful. Solved about half of the difference problems. – Pygmalion Feb 08 '24 at 08:03
  • You probably mean “breaks” rather than “brakes”. Independently thereof, consider installing all of the old TeX Lives (or MikTeXs, if possible - I don't know) 2019-2023 locally, recompiling the book with each of them, and seeing which changes occurred as years passed by. That's what I did once for two books of around 500 pages each. This DOES consume time - many days, potentially. – AlMa1r Feb 15 '24 at 17:29

1 Answers1

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I don't think you can, unless you continue to use TeX Live 2019.

The current version of newtxtext has a different default for helvratio: you get the same as before by adding the old value:

\usepackage[
  helvratio=0.9,
  % other options
]{newtxtext}

For Times you're out of luck. The version of NewTX in TeX Live 2019 still used the TX-based clone of Times. But in the meantime Michael Sharpe decided to add support for OpenType fonts when the engine is XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, so he modified the Times clone to use TeX Gyre Termes in such a way that the result is (almost) the same with all engines.

The TeX Gyre Termes font has many glyphs that are wider than the corresponding ones in the TX clone (which was based on the standard ptm family), so you see different line breaks.

If I add scale=0.95 to the options for newtxtext, the result is

enter image description here

which is very similar to your original. But of course this doesn't guarantee that you get the same line breaks in every situation (and the font is noticeably smaller).

egreg
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