Metafont to Type 1 font

[Lars Hellström]

At 05.18 +0100 2002-03-08, Mahn-Soo Choi wrote:
>Hi falks.
>
>Is there any (handy) way of translating Metafont
>(or GF and TFM files from it) to PostScript Type 1 font?
>
>There're lots of discussion about installing already existing
>Type 1 fonts, but I cannot find how to make Type 1 fonts
>in the first place?
>For me, Metafont might be the best starting point.
>
>I would greatly appreciate any help.

The reason you haven't seen anything about how to make Type 1 fonts is that
this is something very few people do. Usually, one gets them with the OS,
buys them from a commercial foundry [or gets them from a friend], or maybe
one downloads one of the few free fonts that are around. But there are
certainly tools that you could use to make a font of your own, if that is
what you want.

There was a sort of survey on the subject on the tex-fonts
(tex-fonts@math.utah.edu) mailing list last autumn. The mail archive for
2001 of that list is the file (near 2Mb, I'm afraid)

http://www.math.utah.edu:8080/pub/tex/mail/tex-fonts_20011231.txt

The interesting stuff for your perspective starts 27 Oct 2001.

In addition to what was said then, I might (as a sort of pre-announcement)
remark that I have myself been working on a sort of linker that takes
output (containing glyph outlines) from MetaPost and builds a Type 1 font
(+ AFM and MTX metrics) from it, and that this tool has been fully
functional (although neither polished nor much tested) for a couple of
weeks now. If you're feeling a bit adventurous I could send you a copy for
alpha-testing.

Lars Hellström