I'm a Linux guy and use freely liscensed fonts. Some are very similar to Microsoft Times New Roman, for example Nimbus Roman No. 9 L
The Stixfonts are interesting and available for Microsoft, Apple, and Linux operating systems. They are also available in Google Docs, since 2021.
A Fresh Take on Times Roman
The original version of STIX was based on Times Roman, which has now been updated for the digital age.
As is well known, Times Roman was originally intended for printing the London Times. What is not generally appreciated is that the production quality of the Times was atypically high: It was printed on unusually high-quality paper on presses that operated more slowly than most newspaper presses. This allowed for the design of a typeface that could exploit this level of care: serifs could be much finer and counters (enclosed areas such as that in the lowercase e) could be much smaller than in other newspaper typefaces. These features of the font have not always fared well in less exacting environments. At the same time, a notable quirk of the Times Roman family is that the bold font is, in many respects, strikingly dissimilar to the roman font.
Tiro Typeworks explain their approach to updating the Times Roman basis of STIX as follows:
“Our principal goal in approaching STIX Two was to address several inherent deficiencies in the Times New Roman model as well as expand the typographic features. This process necessarily involved diverging somewhat from Times as familiar to people who have only known the common digital versions, while simultaneously restoring to that typeface aspects of the size-appropriate design characteristics that made it so successful in newspaper, book, and journal publishing in it’s metal type incarnation. The essential ‘Times-ness’ remains, but are with greater harmonisation of style across the family.
“Most digital versions of Times have been based on an optical size model that appears too light and fine when scaled down to typical text sizes. In the design of STIX Two, we went back to specimens of size-specific designs from the metal era, and adapted proportions, weights, and spacing of the 10pt and 12pt designs. The oft-noted mismatch between the style of different weights of Times has been resolved with a new bold design that matches the construction of the regular weight.”
https://www.stixfonts.org/
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