[franga2000]

> This is generally against the terms of service for the initial font, however, which would make it a legal matter...

I doubt there's anything in the ToS for most fonts prohibiting me from rendering a short story that just so happens to contain every character and post it online for everyone to enjoy. I couldn't possibly predict that my friend who doesn't even know the name of the font, let alone ever agreed to any ToS, would take that render and trace all the characters on it.

Note that I generically said "render", not image or raster, since from my understanding, an SVG or vector PDF render of the font (not embedded, but turned into paths) wouldn't be any more copyrightable than a raster, but far easier to clone.

[galago]

A font isn't just the letterforms, there's also all the metrics, spacing, kerning, and OpenType features like ligature replacement. Also modern OpenType releases contain many languages which makes the metrics even more complex. Metrics are also very refined to the point that with some fonts if they weren't copied completely there would be problems.