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But this does massivly restrict metafonts capabilities. Pens for example are not allowed (Metafont with applied handbrake)! I agree, metatype1 is not very easy to use if you are familiar with metafont already. For existing fonts, mf2pt1 is in general the best approach, I think. There is a (patched?) version out there that delegates most the hard work to fontforge, and it's results are normally quite acceptable.

There was once (1990) an article in TUGboat 11:4, pages 525-541 which discribes an patch to mf84. The patched mf could produce type3 fonts. Should'nt it be possible to do the same for type1?

Not without a lot of effort. Type3 fonts allow all sorts of stuff that is illegal in Type1, like overlapping and mixing of strokes and fills.

The cases where fontforge is refusing, are cases which are best handeld inside metafont, where one has the knowledge: a.) elliptical curves, which are represented by polygons (lots of points and resolution depandend) and should converted to something smoother, and b.) short epicycles, which are also artifacts from penmotions, which can easyly be detected and replaced by an corner point. Wolfgang