Q1457000

Metafont is a description language used to define raster fonts. It is also the name of the interpreter that executes Metafont code, generating the bitmap fonts that can be embedded into e.g. PostScript. Metafont was devised by Donald Knuth as a companion to his TeX typesetting system.

One of the characteristics of Metafont is that the points defining the shapes of the glyphs—for example top of a stem, or intersection of a stem and crossbar—are defined with geometrical equations; the intent that the three stems of an ‘m’ are equally spaced horizontally might be expressed as x_2-x_1 = x_3-x_2 if points 1, 2, and 3 are at the bottom ends of the three stems, whereas the intent that they all end on the same vertical position would be y_1 = y_2 = y_3 .