On Thursday 22 August 2002 12:31 am, Dustin Norlander wrote:
|  I very much agree with Marcus,  hinting is NOT worth the effort.  Consider
|  that hinting is really only absolutely necessary at font sizes less then
| 24 (excluding <5 which are going to be illegible no matter what). 
| Embedding bitmaps is much easier.  For my most recently released font (
|  http://www.dustismo.com/fonts/Dustismo.zip ) I spent about 5 weeks
|  designing the glyphs, then I spent about a month trying to properly hint
|  ONE character and I finally gave up and embedded bitmaps for sizes 7-22

Have you tried to hint it using TrueType OpCodes? Or PS Hints?
Which software you have used?

|  which took about a month.  It looks quit nice on my windows machine (it -
|  of course - looks like crap on linux).  The guy who did times new roman

Why you are so *negative* about Linux?

|  said he spent two years on the hinting alone, consider he could have
|  embedded bitmaps for the same result and probably 1/30 the time.

Interesting. Do you know that guy in person, or have some URL with more info?
Peter Karow estimates time to hint Latin alphabet as:
* 72 hours for TrueType
* 2 hours for PS Type1 format

Your statement above just confirms this numbers, IMO.
We should go to *PostScript* hinting model (not TrueType one!)

|
|  If anyone here has actually tried to properly hint a font I think they
| will agree that it is a most frustrating endeavor.
|

Yes, I do it almost every day (when have time)!
And it's a lot of fun fro me. ;-))
In what aspects of hinting you are exactly interested?

|
|  Thanks
|  Dustin
|  cheapskatefonts.com
|
|  At 05:52 PM 8/21/2002 +0100, you wrote:
|  >Another quick discussion related to font file format philosophy:
|  >
|  >   Is hinting really worth the effort?
|  >
|  >Font file formats (even scalable ones) in principle ought to be
|  >relatively simple creatures. The only aspect that really adds enormous
|  >amounts of complexity, both with regard to the development of the
|  >renderer as well as with regard to the creation of the fonts, is the
|  >automated control point adjustment based on hinting information. Is that
|  >type of scale-independent hinting really a good idea in the long run?
|  >
|  >I'd like to argue that this is not necessarily the case, and would be
|  >interested in hearing your more generic insights and opinions into the
|  >subjects.
|  >
|  >Main points:
|  >
|  >   - Even entry-level printing devices have now reached pixel sizes
|  >     of 20 �m or less, and many use in addition non-binary pixel
|  >     values for anti-aliasing, such that the changes of up to half a
|  >     pixel width to the outline when hinting is applied really does
|  >     not affect visible quality any more in printouts.
|  >
|  >   - For DTP applications, it is important that the on-screen
|  >     representation approximates as closely as possible the printed
|  > result in a device-independent way, and hinting severely interferes with
|  > that goal as it changes glyph spacings and sizes.
|  
[snip]

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