Re: Google Summer of Code - Ideas List, please discuss

[David Kastrup]

Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:42 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> Somewhat independently, there is a mf2pt1.pl Perl script that
>>>> (shudder) generates .pe script to transform a metapost output to a
>>>> Type 1 font.  I guess that could be done more concisely directly as
>>>> a python script.
>>>
>>> This sounds like a very nice addition.  Maybe generating Python should
>>> be the default, retaining the old .pe approach with as an option.  The
>>> FontForge list is quite helpful in case questions arise.
>>>
>>> Scott Pakin, author of mf2pt1, will certainly add any improvements.
>>
>> There is also a program/utility Metatype in the TeX world, and it has
>> been used for generating various Type1 fonts from Metafont sources.
>
> This looks very outdated, and it seems to use autotrace.  We abandoned
> traced outlines for exact conversions a few years ago.

I should be surprised, actually.  The Wikipedia page is at
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METATYPE1>, and it explicitly states
that it can only work with filled outlines rather than pens, and the
toolchain processes the Bezier outlines from METAPOST.  For an
autotraced outline, that would make no sense, and there is no mention of
any tracing tool in the process.  I think that the Type1 versions of the
ec fonts were created with some kind of autotracing of large bitmaps,
but the Latin Modern fonts, as far as I know, were created using special
font sources adapted for Metatype1.  The whole Metatype1 project came
into being because the Polish programmers did not consider the
autotraced bitmap fonts to be of sufficient quality.

Cf <URL:http://www.ntg.nl/maps/26/15.pdf> for an initial paper.

-- 
David Kastrup