hapax: asciilifeform: if you don't mind spoilers, it generates knuthian "dvi" files (the included dvitype utility basically disassembles the file, so possible to play with and see how tex reacts to various inputs)

hapax: metafont, on the other hand, basically bakes rasters out of font definitions (along with font metrics), but you have to fine-tune it for your printer

hapax: modes even have parameters like additional blackness, compensation for fillin, reduction in overshoot . . .

hapax: i once wrote a converter to bmp, both formats are documented in the sources (if you install tex, weave the sources and find a suitable dvi2pdf converter, can even read the specs in their full glory!)

hapax: entirely possible to bake a dos dvi reader, would have to tune mf for display and just render the rasters and rules according to instructions (format is easy, basically "put a character 15 in current font," "skip down," "draw a rule," etc.)

hapax: metafont itself can render fonts when you work with them, my implementation talks to the graph unit (compatible with borland's), so it's possible to check out the characters (fun fact: without any modifications, works best on mswin, graph even happily allocated an entire 1080p screen, but entirely possible on dos as well i

hapax: f you're really nice to your ega during initialization)