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For a more gentle introduction, check out 'The METAFONTbook', also by Donald E. Knuth. I think that it is still not available in a digital format, but your local CS-oriented library might have a physical copy.

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One of my favorite reads! Somehow, it turns out to be much funnier than the TeXBook, which is a bit arid. I love when he explains that drawing a beautiful S is wickedly difficult. And the metafont language is quite slick.

The character S also has its own chapter in Knuth's "Digital Typography": https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/dt.html

The half-tone chapter is also quite cool.

I remember when the half-tone article was first published in TUGboat. In those days when scanners were exotic equipment not easily accessible, the illustrations were amazing to see (and to recreate).

This is very cool. Thanks for sharing.

It can be found with images missing. The full version can be borrowed from archive.org.

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