4 ms·

If all you have is a few seconds, take a look at https://www.metaflop.com/modulator https://www.metaflop.com/modulator — play with the sliders, or click "flop i

by svat 6y ago

If all you have is a few seconds, take a look at https://www.metaflop.com/modulator https://www.metaflop.com/modulator — play with the sliders, or click "flop it!" a few times. That's the best very-quick introduction today to the basic ideas behind Metafont I think, and the best less-short one is Knuth's “The Concept of a Meta-Font” (1982) — this 25-page paper (in large font so it's really not very long) is IMO not just a great read but a brilliant performance (https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/the-concept-of-a-meta-font.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/...) BTW the submitted link here goes to the “raw” .web source code of the METAFONT program, but that was meant to be read in typeset form: http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/mf/mf.pdf http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/mf/mf.pdf

dhosek 6y ago
An even better presentation (although lacking bug fixes after publication) is volume D of Computers & Typesetting, Metafont: The Program. It's not just the output of weave (which is what's in the linked mf.pdf file), but also includes "mini-indexes" for quick cross-referencing of parts of the code. I'd also note that while TeX is primarily the work of Knuth, MF was more of a collaboration between Knuth and his grad student John Hobby (who also wrote MetaPost) and Hobby should be recognized as a co-author of MF.
- dhosek 6y ago
  I should also recognize David Fuchs as the creator of the GF file format which is TeX's output format and the author of some of the auxiliary tools around MF. Tom Rokicki was not part of the original team, but he created the PK format for bitmap fonts which offered even greater compression than GF and became the standard for distributing bitmap fonts for TeX (for a long time even, after GF was created, a lot of device drivers required PXL fonts which were uncompressed bitmaps, which, especially in 1980s computing, were resource heavy). Neenie Billawalla was an important figure in the development of MF as well. She created the calligraphic uppercase letters in the CM math set and the Pandora typeface which was, as I recall, the first non-CM type family created using MF84 (Euler Math predates it, but iirc was created using MF79 and didn't take advantage of the parameterization capable with MF so each size was separately digitized). I'm sure there were other important figures in the development of MF and the surrounding technologies back in the 80s, and I apologize if I've left anyone out.

by svat 6y ago

dhosek 6y ago

An even better presentation (although lacking bug fixes after publication) is volume D of Computers & Typesetting, Metafont: The Program. It's not just the output of weave (which is what's in the linked mf.pdf file), but also includes "mini-indexes" for quick cross-referencing of parts of the code. I'd also note that while TeX is primarily the work of Knuth, MF was more of a collaboration between Knuth and his grad student John Hobby (who also wrote MetaPost) and Hobby should be recognized as a co-author of MF.

dhosek 6y ago
I should also recognize David Fuchs as the creator of the GF file format which is TeX's output format and the author of some of the auxiliary tools around MF. Tom Rokicki was not part of the original team, but he created the PK format for bitmap fonts which offered even greater compression than GF and became the standard for distributing bitmap fonts for TeX (for a long time even, after GF was created, a lot of device drivers required PXL fonts which were uncompressed bitmaps, which, especially in 1980s computing, were resource heavy). Neenie Billawalla was an important figure in the development of MF as well. She created the calligraphic uppercase letters in the CM math set and the Pandora typeface which was, as I recall, the first non-CM type family created using MF84 (Euler Math predates it, but iirc was created using MF79 and didn't take advantage of the parameterization capable with MF so each size was separately digitized). I'm sure there were other important figures in the development of MF and the surrounding technologies back in the 80s, and I apologize if I've left anyone out.