On Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 11:02:58PM -0400, Kris Maglione wrote: > 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.
This all really depends on how you like your fonts rendered. When Apple first ported Safari to Windows, everyone was screaming about how the fonts looked like crap. The Apply way is to use little hinting and respect the shape of the font glyphs, while the Microsoft way is to hammer the font into the pixel grid so it looks sharper, but also causes the original typeface's unique shape to suffer. Personally, I prefer the autohinter since I've found that with slight hinting it looks very similar to the way Apple renders their fonts. I don't know if Apple uses an autohinter or the hints in the font, but they certainly put a lot less emphasis on the hinting and more on the shape. Generally, if you like your fonts sharp on screen (Microsoft), designer hints are usually the best. If you want your fonts to look more like print (Apple), using the autohinter seems to work better. Not that this matters much, as I spend most of my time staring at bitmaped monospace fonts. Josh Rickmar
