METAFONT: The Program

This volume contains the fully documented program listing for METAFONT, Donald E. Knuth's revolutionary typeface design language.

Readers interested in software development and in Knuth's programming style will find this a fascinating and instructive case study. Never before has a computer program with this much size and variety been spelled out so clearly and completely. Knuth presents all the algorithms and explains every detail of the METAFONT program, utilizing the WEB system of structured documentation that he developed as part of his TeX research project. METFONT's new algorithms for computer graphics make this program especially interesting; traditional algorithms of parsing and macro expansion are present too, often with new twists. This book is an excellent lesson by example on how to put programming theory into practice.

1. Introduction
2. The character set
3. Input and output
4. String handling
5. On-line and off-line printing
6. Reporting errors
7. Arithmetic with scaled numbers
8. Algebraic and transcendental functions
9. Packed data
10. Dynamic memory allocation
11. Memory layout
12. The command codes
13. The hash table
14. Token lists
15. Data structures for variables
16. Saving and restoring equivalents
17. Data structures for paths
18. Choosing control points
19. Generating discrete moves
20. Edge structures
21. Subdivision into octants
22. Filling a contour
23. Polygonal pens
24. Filling an envelope
25. Elliptical pens
26. Direction and intersection times
27. Online graphic output
28. Dynamic linear equations
29. Dynamic nonlinear equations
30. Introduction to the syntactic routines
31. Input stacks and states
32. Maintaining the input stacks
33. Getting the next token
34. Scanning macro definitions
35. Expanding the next token
36. Conditional processing
37. Iterations
38. File names
39. Introduction to the parsing routines
40. Parsing primary expressions
41. Parsing secondary and higher expressions
42. Doing the operations
43. Statements and commands
44. Commands
45. Font metric data
46. Generic font file format
47. Shipping characters out
48. Dumping and undumping the tables
49. The main program
50. Debugging
51. System-dependent changes
52. Index

Commented code to the MetaFont program. A classic.