4 ms·

No. Metafont (at least for format, not the interpreter) is more akin to TrueType or Postscript font definitions. This is more akin to the old Adobe MultiMaster

by __jal 10y ago

No. Metafont (at least for format, not the interpreter) is more akin to TrueType or Postscript font definitions. This is more akin to the old Adobe MultiMaster fonts, where the user installed one font that could then be dynamically tuned in various ways - weight, descenders, etc.

rspeer 10y ago
That's what Metafont was supposed to be, too. See, for example, http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo . But it seems that it ended up being used for a much more narrow purpose in the actual TeX stack that people use.
- taeric 10y ago
  I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. I hate the conservative, everything is old and has been done view; however, it is easy to look at some of the original large projects that people chose to ignore and be amazed at what they were already doing. It isn't in XML, but METAPOST/METAFONT are two really really cool projects.
  - pgtan 10y ago
    > I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. yeah, well, same true for Multiple Master fonts. It ended up that Adobe gave the font metrics to the TeX[0] community. The complexity of the fonts was obviously too much for the "graphic designer". 0 https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz
    - taeric 10y ago
      What are the odds that this time, things will take off? :)
- __jal 10y ago
  Ah, thanks for the info. I had no idea. My first year of college was the first year my school shifted most departments' document recommendations to MS Word from TeX, so I never really used it for authoring. Spending a day playing trying to make something useful with it has been on my someday-list for... a depressingly long time.
taeric 10y ago
As the sibling post pointed out. METAFONT can be parameterized in more than just size of font. Computer Modern, in particular, has quite a few parameters that you can fiddle with. I don't think many people ever did. The book Computer Modern has a fun section at the end where it goes through several poems showing different parameters for the font for each section.

by __jal 10y ago

rspeer 10y ago

That's what Metafont was supposed to be, too. See, for example, http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo http://www.antonvasetenkov.com/metafont-demo . But it seems that it ended up being used for a much more narrow purpose in the actual TeX stack that people use.

taeric 10y ago
I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. I hate the conservative, everything is old and has been done view; however, it is easy to look at some of the original large projects that people chose to ignore and be amazed at what they were already doing. It isn't in XML, but METAPOST/METAFONT are two really really cool projects.
- pgtan 10y ago
  > I took it as basically nobody else used METAFONT. yeah, well, same true for Multiple Master fonts. It ended up that Adobe gave the font metrics to the TeX[0] community. The complexity of the fonts was obviously too much for the "graphic designer". 0 https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz https://www.lcdf.org/type/mm-metrics-1.2.tar.gz
  - taeric 10y ago
    What are the odds that this time, things will take off? :)
__jal 10y ago
Ah, thanks for the info. I had no idea. My first year of college was the first year my school shifted most departments' document recommendations to MS Word from TeX, so I never really used it for authoring. Spending a day playing trying to make something useful with it has been on my someday-list for... a depressingly long time.

taeric 10y ago

As the sibling post pointed out. METAFONT can be parameterized in more than just size of font. Computer Modern, in particular, has quite a few parameters that you can fiddle with. I don't think many people ever did. The book Computer Modern has a fun section at the end where it goes through several poems showing different parameters for the font for each section.