I wrote an automatic hinter in PostScript which first identifies horizontal and vertical tangents on the outlines, and then matches close tangents of the same polarity to define possible locations for hints. Shown here is the capital S of the URW font URWPalladioL-Roma. We have a battery of 12 fonts containing over 1400 characters, pairs and triples that can be fit together in interesting ways to simulate real handwriting. All were obtained with a magnetic pen and converted by a type 3 PostScript generator in which Bezier splines were calculated using Hobby's algorithm. Words are broken up into collections of glyphs, and optimization of the break-up is done by a mechanism of rewards and penalties.
Glyphs are strip-kerned on the fly and put together.
The sample shows the constituent glyphs in various shades. The software was developed by Luc Devroye and Mike McDougall . The Bezier outlines were again produced by Sandro's program. The Bezier control points on the contour show how well Sandro's tracing program works on characters with many intersecting strokes. I drew this font a little while after his death.