Typesetting
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I used to wonder why word processed text was so ugly until I met electronic typesetting and realised
that word processing is to typesetting what Pot Noodle is to Chow Mein. Now I
have a LATEX fetish. Unfortunately I have little to show for myself, because I
usually can't be bothered to write documentation and clean up my crappy code. Here are a few things
fit to be seen by the light of day.
METAFONT
I recently discovered METAFONT and liked it immensely from the
onset. I'm addicted, just as Knuth predicts in the METAFONT Book. They
should move that warning to the book's cover as a disclaimer!
METAFONT is Turing Complete; its inputs are real programs, although
METAFONT provides intrinsic operations to draw smooth curves and solve
equations, both of which are invaluable in making fonts (look
good). The output of METAFONT is usually a TeX font, although you
could use METAPOST to make Postscript (and thence Truetype) fonts.
Unfortunately, I only have raster images of my METAFONT hacks so
far. I'd like to pack up along with examples and font source first.
The Menasat syllabary (and
associated TEX code to render ména
properly) is so far the only thing I have that's worth showing here.
It's also the first thing I ever made in METAFONT.
Which goes to show how easy it is to get started.
I just went through a mini-obsession with celtic knotwork, and
made a METAFONT program to help in
drawing knots.
