Re: GSoC 2020 update, May 30

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 12:34 AM Owen Lamb <owendlamb@gmail.com> wrote:
> I started work on Han-Wen's suggested order of operations. In order to make
> the .mf files output a SMuFL code to their log, I needed to learn Metafont,
> which proved to be a language as little documented as it is ingenious.
> First, I followed the Metafont tutorial provided in the LilyPond docs
> (found at http://metafont.tutorial.free.fr/). It seemed to be
> unfinished, so I started looking at the other resources on that site. *The
> METAFONT Book* was comprehensive, but, since TeXing it is not legally
> allowed,

I think nobody can stop you from texing it and looking at the result.
Don't redistribute the resulting PDF, though.

I commend you for trying to learn Metafont, but it's one of the most
obscure, niche programming languages I ever learned, and if I have to
do something, I have to look up how it works all over again. If you
got to dumping some string/number from the autometric macros, then
you've achieved your objective already.

> As an aside, looking at my Git history, it appears that, when I tried to
> change the name of my first commit to be more informative, I accidentally
> fused it with Valentin's previous commit. Sorry about that! The code isn't
> affected, but it looks rather strange. I think it's because I attempted to
> revert the previous commit *and* do an "amend" commit. The right way to do
> it would have been just to "amend," correct? At any rate, I plan on
> thinking harder about what to call my commits the first time from now on!

If you are building a  multi-commit series, you should get familiar
with rebase -i. This lets you edit commits in the middle of a
sequence.

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - hanwenn@gmail.com - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen