2 ms·

I'd be interested in hearing about experiences with Metafont from those of you who have put effort into it. How far did you get and how much time did you spend

• dhosek 6y ago
  You'll need the Metafontbook and Computer Modern Typefaces. It's worth spending time looking through the MF source for other typefaces in CTAN. Drawing characters/symbols on graph paper is helpful for being able to determine what points should be. MF is a really nice language to work with. It's macro-based like TeX, but because it's not intertwining with text presentation, it doesn't feel as awkward as TeX programming does. Among other things, it's effectively an algebraic solver system.
  • dhosek 6y ago
    If it's available, gftodvi is a useful tool as well. It creates a large bitmap with annotations of locations on it (it was used for the illustrations in Computer Modern Typefaces). It would be so much nicer to use with contemporary previewing capabilities than things were back in 1990 when I had to send my gftodvi output to the Xerox printer in the basement of the computer center, hope it didn't crash the printer and get my printout half an hour later.