Report Number: CS-TR-79-762
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: METAFONT: a system for alphabet design
Author: Knuth, Donald E.
Date: September 1979
Abstract: This is the user's manual for METAFONT, a companion to the TEX tyesetting system. The system makes it fairly easy to define high quality fonts of type in a machine-independent manner; a user writes "programs" in a new language developed for this purpose. By varying parameters of a design, an unlimited number of typefaces can be obtained from a single set of programs. The manual also sketches the algorithms used by the system to draw the character shapes.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/79/762/CS-TR-79-762.pdf