"Exploring the Intricacies of Font Rendering"
Programmer Phillip Tennen embarked on a quest to improve font rendering in his hobby operating system, axle, by writing a TrueType font renderer. After nearly a decade of using a basic 8x8 bitmap font system, Tennen tackled the complexities of TrueType fonts, which involve understanding glyphs, character spacing, and a hinting system that adjusts control points to maintain legibility at low resolutions. His journey revealed the intricate details and challenges of font rendering, transforming axle's text appearance significantly. The enhanced renderer's source code is shared on GitHub, demystifying the process and making fonts seem less like "forbidden magic."