Editing Metafont (section)

==Use==
While well-known type designers, such as [[Hermann Zapf]], have collaborated with Knuth to create new fonts using Metafont, the system has not been widely adopted by professional type designers. Knuth attributes this to the fact that "asking an artist to become enough of a mathematician to understand how to write a font with 60 parameters is too much."<ref>CSTUG, Charles University, Prague, March 1996, Questions and Answers with Prof. Donald E. Knuth, reproduced in TUGboat '''17 (4)''' (1996), 355–67. Citation is from page 361. Available online at [http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb17-4/tb53knuc.pdf ]''</ref> [[Jonathan Hoefler]] commented that the Metafont system ultimately became "a technology behind zero of your favourite fonts...Knuth's idea that letters start with skeletal forms is flawed."<ref name="skeletal forms">{{cite web |last1=Hoefler |first1=Jonathan |title=Knuth's idea that letters start with skeletal forms is flawed. But his work is important and had lasting impact. |url=https://twitter.com/HoeflerCo/status/655557339987226624 |publisher=Twitter |access-date=18 August 2018}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=This is literally just a tweet.|date=September 2022}}

The Metafont system allows fonts to be processed in unusual ways; in 1982, Knuth showed how it could be used to morph fonts, with a [[serif]] font slowly transitioning into a [[sans-serif]] design over the course of a text.<ref name="The Concept of a Meta-Font">{{cite journal|last1=Knuth|first1=Donald|title=The Concept of a Meta-Font|journal=Visible Language|date=1982|volume=16|issue=1|pages=3–27|url=https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/the-concept-of-a-meta-font.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200707233644/https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/the-concept-of-a-meta-font.pdf |archive-date=2020-07-07 }}</ref>