Creation of a PostScript Type 1 logo font with MetaType1


Klaus Höppner
DANTE e.V.
Play (44min) Download: M4V | MP3

MetaType 1 is a tool created by Bogusław Jackowski, Janusz Nowacki, and Piotr Strzelczyk for creation of PostScript Type 1 fonts. It uses METAPOST, t1utils and some AWK scripts to start von a METAPOST sources with some special macros.

METAPOST was used to create the Latin Modern fonts, derived from Computer Modern fonts but including a lot of charactes with accents and nowadays part of most modern TEX distributions. Additionally some new fonts like Iwona and Kurier were created by the developers of MetaType 1.

I came into touch with METAPOST when I wanted to convert an existing logo font from METAFONT to PostScript Type 1. Unfortunately there doesn’t exist a ahndsome tutorial or cookbook for using MetaType 1. So I started to play with the example fonts supplied as part of MetaType 1 and to read the comments in the source. This tutorial will show a simple use case and the lessions I learnt.