Re: MetaFont

["Wolfgang Werners-Lucchini" <wwl@musensturm.de>]

> >>> But this does massivly restrict metafonts capabilities. Pens
> for
> >>> example are not allowed (Metafont with applied handbrake)!
> >> I agree, metatype1 is not very easy to use if you are familiar
> >> with
> >> metafont already. For existing fonts, mf2pt1 is in general the
> >> best
> >> approach, I think. There is a (patched?) version out there that
> >> delegates most the hard work to fontforge, and it's results are
> >> normally
> >> quite acceptable.
> > 
> > There was once (1990) an article in TUGboat 11:4, pages 525-541
> > which discribes an patch to mf84. The patched mf could produce
> type3 
> > fonts. Should'nt it be possible to do the same for type1?
> 
> Not without a lot of effort. Type3 fonts allow all sorts of stuff
> that is illegal in Type1, like overlapping and mixing of strokes
> and fills.

The cases where fontforge is refusing, are cases which are best 
handeld inside metafont, where one has the knowledge: a.) elliptical 
curves, which are represented by polygons (lots of points and 
resolution depandend) and should converted to something smoother, and 
b.) short epicycles, which are also artifacts from penmotions, which 
can easyly be detected and replaced by an corner point.

Wolfgang
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