There’s an interesting point of view in this quote that I feel is generally applicable to software beyond the specific field of typography:
”...digital type creation was far beyond the reach of a student from Eastern Europe since URW’s Ikarus font digitising system required an unimaginable investment in technologies, and Macintosh was still only a distant legend (and possibly still under US trade embargo). But soon a friend introduced me to the free Metafont programming language by Donald Knuth, which could run on a basic PC”
The East European student was extremely motivated to create a digital font design but didn’t have access to tools his Western counterparts could take for granted. So he turned to a system (Metafont) that was designed from a completely different perspective than the mainstream, and used it to produce a work of unique beauty and complexity.
Place this story in the context of today’s hardware. Who is the East European, and what’s the technology that he/she lacks access to? Maybe there’s somebody in India with incredible creative vision but only a low-end Android phone, just waiting to discover an expressive solution, no matter if way outside of mainstream Western software expectations.
It's not quite that. Metafont models type using pen strokes rather than outlines, so the process of translating paper designs into the format couldn't be accomplished by just scanning the outline -- but of course it would be a great aid.
”...digital type creation was far beyond the reach of a student from Eastern Europe since URW’s Ikarus font digitising system required an unimaginable investment in technologies, and Macintosh was still only a distant legend (and possibly still under US trade embargo). But soon a friend introduced me to the free Metafont programming language by Donald Knuth, which could run on a basic PC”
The East European student was extremely motivated to create a digital font design but didn’t have access to tools his Western counterparts could take for granted. So he turned to a system (Metafont) that was designed from a completely different perspective than the mainstream, and used it to produce a work of unique beauty and complexity.
Place this story in the context of today’s hardware. Who is the East European, and what’s the technology that he/she lacks access to? Maybe there’s somebody in India with incredible creative vision but only a low-end Android phone, just waiting to discover an expressive solution, no matter if way outside of mainstream Western software expectations.