Over the last few evenings I’ve been exploring Bézier curves and effects that can be achieved through “flattening” glyph paths. I found a great C++ library called Clipper which lets you perform a number of interesting operations on polygons. After you flatten a glyph path you can pass it to Clipper to do all sorts of “funky” things, such as offsetting the Laam-Alef glyph path in the example shown below. The PDF file was generated by the HARU PDF library (written in C) and glyph outlines were obtained using FreeType (also written in C). Well, it’s more interesting than watching the rubbish on TV!
Quick update: Another example with multiple paths in the glyph.