[texhax] Manipulating fonts?

[Karl Berry]

    I could swear that I've seen information about manipulating fonts in 
    many ways:  stretching height, width, shearing, shading, etc.

Aside from simple scaling (using font constructs like "at NNpt"), I
don't know of any way to specify these manipulations in (La)TeX.  Maybe
ConTeXt can do it, since it already supports sophisticated interactions
between TeX and the drivers.  And XeTeX might be able to do such things
if you're on MacOSX.

At the driver level, some of these things can be done, by making new
fonts.  dvips/dvipdfm[x] supports a SlantFont parameter in map files,
intended for making obliques, and ExtendFont for making condensed or
expanded fonts, but that's about it AFAIK.  No way to scale height
independently.  http://tug.org/texinfohtml/dvips.html#psfonts_002emap
briefly explains these things.

Perhaps others know of better alternatives.

Best,
karl