On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 01:50:24AM +0100, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
Last I really checked the autohinter had become very good. A few years
ago I actually recompiled freetype to disable the interpreter because the
autohinter produced so much better results for me. I suspect that was due
to my use of free fonts which were unlikely to have properly-done
bytecode, if they had any bytecode at all. Ariel actually suffered quite
badly from the autohinter, much more than other fonts, which to my mind
says "Ariel is a suck-more font." ;)
I still don't think that the auto-hinter is nearly up to par
with designer hinted fonts. For the fonts that I have screen and
print varieties from different foundaries, the versions without
hinting information look considerably worse on-screen (though
better in print) than the auto-hinted varieties. And I'd say
that Ariel is one of the better hinted fonts around these days
(as are most of the Microsoft core fonts). I have Linotype
variants of most several of them, and they all begin to look
blurry beyond ~11pt, whereas the Microsoft variants remain
pixel-perfect.
Sometimes I think there's a lot of things like this in computing.
Someone produces something which works well for most things but which
doesn't work so well for the flagship that area, therefore it has to be
replaced with something which requires more work from everyone just as
the flagship had a lot of work invested into it. Then again, chances are
what I'm saying is quite irrelevant for fonts.
I don't think this is the case. The hinting information is
optional on both ends. Foundaries spend a lot of money to
provide it for screen fonts because it makes a difference.
Anyone choosing not to support it doesn't have to. But I'd say
that designer hinted fonts are actually significantly easier to
render than auto-hinted fonts, which means that it only makes it
easier on font designers, not implemenenters.
--
Kris Maglione
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly
teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
--Mark Twain
