Definitions for "Metafont"
Keywords:  bitmap, font, knuth, donald, linearly
A graphics language used for creating fonts. Metafont has a lot of nice features, the main one being that fonts created with metafont need not just scale linearly. That is, a 17 point computer modern font generated by metafont is not the same as a magnified 10 point computer modern font. Prior to Adobe's multiple master technology, metafont was unique with respect to having this feature. Metafonts main advantage is that it produces high quality fonts. The disadvantage is that generating bitmaps from the outline fonts is slow, so they aren't feasible for WYSIWYG publishing.
Font production language developed by Donald Knuth.
METAFONT is a programming language used to define vector fonts. It is also the name of the interpreter that executes METAFONT code, converting the vector fonts into bitmap fonts that can be included in Post Script documents.