Splines with tangent handles are much better for font design as well, than splines without handles.
Splines defined by points and not tangents are useful for different reasons, and they’re not great if you want to have sharp changes of angle. You can do it by duplicating control points, but that causes some math mayhem in some situations.
In computer graphics people use the “Catmull-Rom” spline a lot, which is a type of interpolating spline that goes through the control points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centripetal_Catmull–Rom_spline
People also use the B-spline as well, which is smoother and nicer than the Catmull-Rom spline, but it’s an approximating spline that doesn’t usually go exactly through the control points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-spline
Both of these get used in CG for hair and fur - which is a good example of an application of curves that doesn’t require sharp angles along the splines.
It seems vastly more intuitive to place points rather than adjust handles. (And set directions for endpoints if the curve is open.)
And obviously a practical tool will provide the capability to join separate cubic splines at sharp angles.
Does anyone know of a GUI drawing tool based on this? I've always wanted to experiment with it. Because I've always wanted to either confirm that it's a great idea that we should all be using instead of beziers, or else discover if there's an immediately obvious reason once you try it out that it's a terrible idea.
The alternative, which obeys similar principles, is the Pencil tool. This simply spams out a ton of points to match what you draw. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37460009 mentions that these points can be capably reduced, which could serve your purpose.