One of the things I want to do is to use autotrace centerline to get a basic stroke trace, and then manually tweak it so that drawing the glyphs makes sense. Then I can use that for SVG animations (there are Javascript tutorials for that), which I can use to help my kiddo learn how to write. (Whether I should teach her to forge my handwriting so early might be another matter... ;) )
In metal typesetting, a font is exactly a collection of metal blocks (which embody glyphs of a given design, size, and thickness). But on a computer, a font is a piece of software that renders text in a given typeface — simulating a pen moving along curves with varying parameters is entirely feasible. Not at all a bad starting point.