“Too many math alphabets” error

Question

I just got the error

Too many math alphabets used in version normal.

on a document I'm editing. What can I do to fix this, other than stop using an alphabet? All I've found online is instructions on what to do if you're using the bm.sty package, which I'm not calling (but maybe it's hidden in the AMS stuff?). I'll note, the thing that broke it was adding mathrsfs and using \mathscr.

Anyways, as you'll see in my preamble, I tried what they suggested anyways, and it didn't work.

My preamble:

\documentclass[11pt]{amsart}  
\newcommand{\bmmax}{0}  
\newcommand{\hmmax}{0}  
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb, amsthm, latexsym, amscd, enumerate, MnSymbol,bbm, etex,nicefrac,mathrsfs}

I'm using

\mathbf
\mathcal
\mathfrak
\mathscr
\mathsf
\mathbb
\mathbbm %(for a lower case blackboard bold letter)

I recognize this is a lot of math fonts, but doesn't seem unreasonable.

---

EDIT: getting rid of MnSymbol fixed things...

Answer 1

It looks like you've got some redundant packages in there which are using up math family slots (of which there are only 16 total). (Note that amsart also loads the amsfonts package which uses up several more for \mathfrak, \mathbb, etc.) For example, in the latexsym docs:

These fonts are not automatically included in the NFSS2/LATEX2ε since they take up important space and aren’t necessary if one makes use of the packages amsfonts or amssymb.

Furthermore, if you're using MnSymbol, doesn't that override much of the amssymb package? I could be wrong about that.

Finally, it looks the bbm family takes up five (or is it only three?) on its own—if you don't need that many you can copy out just the definitions you need, such as

\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathbbm}{U}{bbm}{m}{n}

Bearing all this in mind, here's a minimal example that at least compiles: (I've removed a couple of unrelated packages)

\documentclass[11pt]{amsart}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb, amscd, MnSymbol,mathrsfs}
\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathbbm}{U}{bbm}{m}{n}% from bbm.sty
\begin{document}
\[
\mathbf A
\mathcal A
\mathfrak A
\mathscr A
\mathsf A
\mathbb A
\mathbbm a
\]
\end{document}