These questions are a follow up after tinkering with the various hinters and trying to find which one looks the best for the set of fonts used. I don't need answers, but I thought people might want to discuss them.
1. My understanding of hints is that they are needed when the font is small to help the appearance. Is there some threshold above which they can be ignored? Could this lead to performance improvements (because the hints can be trivially skipped or the module can avoid loading)? 2. Are there any tests showing that fonts at a large point size are identical regardless of the hint module used? 3. I was thinking about the error from the hint modules and how to measure and reduce it. We obviously can't have an ideal hinter, but I was wondering if we could still calculate an ideal hinter even if we can't make one? For instance, one view of a perfect hinter could be that it shows all the edge transitions. If we calculate the number of transitions possible on a pixel row, and then compare to what a hinter produces, we can get a rating for each row of the character. Rotate for the vertical dimension. Apply to all characters. Now we have an automatic test for how well a hinter is working. Look at the worst characters and improve them. Make sure none of the other characters go down, over time. You could confirm that adding a hint reduced the hint error. You could check at which point sizes a hint reduces error (maybe the hint isn't implemented correctly). There are obviously complications (what is the result for a one pixel tall capital 'H') but even a simple version would probably reveal a lot. 4. I was thinking about trying to figure out which hinter to use. The answer seems to vary depending on which fonts are installed, meaning you can't predict at compile time. If we had a hint error measurer we could automatically select the best hinter for the font at runtime. We could probably guess well with a trick. For instance, we probably don't need to measure every single character. There might be two or three characters that give us the right decision 90% of the time. -Roger Flores _______________________________________________ Freetype mailing list Freetype@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype