> Computer Modern was a Herculean effort by Knuth, but in my opinion, it’s wholly lacking in many departments. It’s spindly, clinical, and vapid.
I strongly agree, I hate how Computer Modern looks, especially because of what you describe as being "spindly" - it's exceptionally light. If you use any other font for body text then the contrast is overwhelming, when the maths and text ought to just flow together. You can use it for body text too but then the whole page looks a mess.
> ... make a beautiful typeface for mathematics that is not gimmicky.
My favourite text/maths combinations:
* Palatino for text and Pazo [1] for maths. I am a big fan of Palatino, and Pazo is derived from it - I'm not sure what the exact relationship is but to me they look like basically the same font. For me, this is the direct answer to your question of a "beautiful typeface for mathematics". Perhaps not every symbol in the TeX package was hand-designed for the font, but I haven't noticed any real clash. The only problem is that it's such a radical departure from traditional TeX fonts that it might be a bit ubrupt for some people. My PhD supervisor certainly didn't like me using it (he thought I had used totally different typesetting software and told me to "just use TeX like everybody else").
\usepackage[slantedGreek]{mathpazo}
\usepackage{upgreek} % Euler upright Greek; matches Palatino quite well
* This is a very unfashionable opinion but I actually think Times is a very readable font and works well with mathematics. I used the times [4] package (although I note it now says you should load the font a different way) with the commercial but very affordable mtpro2 [5]
* I often used Utopia for both text and maths [3]. This is more of a compromise as it looks a tiny bit like Computer Modern (to its discredit) but is more like more conventional fonts and definitely doesn't have CM's weight problem. It's actually somewhat similar to Microsoft's Cambria and Cambria Math.
\usepackage[utopia,greekuppercase=italicized]{mathdesign} % for math
\usepackage{esint} % make integrals look less silly
\newcommand{\mathbold}[1]{\boldsymbol{#1}}
* I found people (maybe just my supervisor!) still had a problem with using Utopia as the text font so I settled on the super-compromise of Times text with Utopia math for my thesis; I'd have prefered the fonts to be identical but these go fairly well and certainly their weights don't clash (unlike CM with anything else).
* For presentations I think it's best to use a san-serif font. The most complete combination I've been able to find is CM Bright for text/math [6] and esstixbb for blackboard bold (with beramono for fixed-width)
I strongly agree, I hate how Computer Modern looks, especially because of what you describe as being "spindly" - it's exceptionally light. If you use any other font for body text then the contrast is overwhelming, when the maths and text ought to just flow together. You can use it for body text too but then the whole page looks a mess.
> ... make a beautiful typeface for mathematics that is not gimmicky.
My favourite text/maths combinations:
* Palatino for text and Pazo [1] for maths. I am a big fan of Palatino, and Pazo is derived from it - I'm not sure what the exact relationship is but to me they look like basically the same font. For me, this is the direct answer to your question of a "beautiful typeface for mathematics". Perhaps not every symbol in the TeX package was hand-designed for the font, but I haven't noticed any real clash. The only problem is that it's such a radical departure from traditional TeX fonts that it might be a bit ubrupt for some people. My PhD supervisor certainly didn't like me using it (he thought I had used totally different typesetting software and told me to "just use TeX like everybody else").
* This is a very unfashionable opinion but I actually think Times is a very readable font and works well with mathematics. I used the times [4] package (although I note it now says you should load the font a different way) with the commercial but very affordable mtpro2 [5]* I often used Utopia for both text and maths [3]. This is more of a compromise as it looks a tiny bit like Computer Modern (to its discredit) but is more like more conventional fonts and definitely doesn't have CM's weight problem. It's actually somewhat similar to Microsoft's Cambria and Cambria Math.
* I found people (maybe just my supervisor!) still had a problem with using Utopia as the text font so I settled on the super-compromise of Times text with Utopia math for my thesis; I'd have prefered the fonts to be identical but these go fairly well and certainly their weights don't clash (unlike CM with anything else).* For presentations I think it's best to use a san-serif font. The most complete combination I've been able to find is CM Bright for text/math [6] and esstixbb for blackboard bold (with beramono for fixed-width)
[1] https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/mathpazo?lang=en[2] https://ctan.org/pkg/upgreek?lang=en
[3] https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/utopia-mathdesign/
[4] https://ctan.org/pkg/times?lang=en
[5] https://www.pctex.com/mtpro2.html
[6] https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/computermodernbright/