The Metafont Book, vol. C
From the series: Computers and Typesetting
by Donald E. Knuth
illustrated by Duane Bibby

Addison Wesley (Menlo Park, California): 1986. Hardcover: 361 pages. ISBN-10: 0-201-13445-4 Suggested retail price: $54.95 (US) Tags: fonts; paragraphs; Typesetting Tactical strength: [5/10]

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Dr. Knuth's Metafont system tries to do for fonts what his TeX typesetting system did for setting type. (See The TeXbook.) While developing TeX, Dr. Knuth discovered that the existing bitmapped fonts did not create aesthetically pleasing results, especially when scaled to various sized. The Metafont system describes fonts as a series of brush strokes, but the user can manipulate about fourteen different variables, including stem width, serif curvature, serif length, and slant. Dr. Knuth tried to create a system that could reproduce the nuances of hand set type. For example, developers of hand set type didn't just scale 4-point type by 10 to make 40-point type -- the system that most outline font systems like TrueType and PostScript use. Instead, the font developers created unique font families for each point size to maximize readability.

Although you can create any number of fonts by manipulating the variables of a Metafont font, I find the idea of switching pens and brush strokes clumsy and reminiscent of the Logo programming language. In some cases where Dr. Knuth could not get the results he wanted with his regular pens, he resorted to using another pen in eraser mode to remove the unwanted artifacts. In general, I find outline fonts easier to develop and a more satisfying solution to the problem of reproducing good-looking type.

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