11.1 Metafont and BZRto

Metafont is a language for specifying graphic shapes, particularly characters in a font of a type, as well as the name of the program which interprets the language. It is commonly used to generate fonts for TeX and related software (TeX and Metafont were developed more-or-less simultaneously by Donald Knuth during the years 1977--1985). See section 2.2.1 Archives, for how to obtain the Metafont program.

BZRto generates a Metafont font `foo.mf' from the input file `foo10.bzr' (the `10' being the design size of the input) if you specify the `-metafont' option, as in:

bzrto -metafont foo

Presuming Metafont has been installed properly at your site, you can then make both a TFM and a GF file for foo at a size of 10pt and rasterized for your most common output device with the command:

mf '\mode:=localfont; input foo'

(The single quotes are not seen by Metafont; they just protect the backslash and semicolon from interpretation by your shell.)

The assignment to mode tells Metafont the name of your output device. localfont should be a synonym for some real output device, defined when Metafont was installed. The GF file will be named `foo.dpigf', where dpi is the resolution of the localfont device.

Given the TFM and GF file, you can now use the font in TeX.

11.1.1 Metafont output at any size		Making larger or smaller fonts.
11.1.2 Proofing with Metafont		Metafont can help with debugging fonts.