Re: METAFONT - are you kidding?

On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, Paul Haeberli wrote:

> As far as I know, METAFONT describes the shape of each character
> using spline paths and a varying brush shape that is dragged
> along the path.  

> It is not an outline font format - please correct me if I'm wrong.

That's right, although it could be used to produce font files in an 
outline format. Its primary usefulness, however, is the ability to 
produce high-quality bitmaps at a variety of resolutions.

> I think for this reason it's value in this context is very small.

On the contrary, I think a high-quality scalable format is exactly what 
is needed in this context, although we may want to store both metafont 
and compiled bitmap forms of the font on the web server, and let 
client-server negotiation be the deciding factor.

Benjamin C. W. Sittler

Received on Saturday, 27 January 1996 17:22:58 UTC