1999 would be the right time lol. Depending on how long you've used engraving programs, it's only been the past few years that they've started to really be able to function at the level they should have been functioning at!
Back in the late 90s to the late 2000s modifying fonts and custom fonts were pretty popular to get around a lot of the limitations of engraving programs. I even modified a few myself back then, having bought a font creator program, just so I could create 4 bar repeats and copy certain elements that would be in one font and not in another, stuff like that.
I remember laying out a good amount of money, and using for a long time, those fantastic Bill Duncan fonts if you remember those. Those were a huge set of custom fonts from chords to harp notation to get around all the limitations of engraving programs back then.
Sorry for the rambling message but yeah, if the date on the font says 1999 then the time period was ripe for a modified font.