On Aug 30, 2012, at 12:05 , steve harley wrote: > on 2012-08-30 6:42 Doug Franklin wrote >> On 2012-08-30 3:03, Joseph McAllister wrote: >> >>> Anyway, my recollection is that TrueType was a method of minutely smoothing >>> what was once lumpy pixels. As opposed to Adobe's vector drawing formula. >>> It's been so long since I had to even think about it. Ya gotta let go of >>> some >>> of what you knew to make room for FaceBook timelines and Netflix streaming. >>> Gagh. >> >> TrueType character forms are composed of a set of vectors on (IIRC) a 2048 x >> 2048 coordinate grid, like a lot of font description languages. > > [typography geek alert] > > TrueType uses splines (curves) much like PostScript, except the splines are > quadratic as opposed to PostScript's Bézier splines; so neither uses vectors > except insofar splines are a superset of vectors; in both types of fonts, > hinting simply "corrects" the pixels when rendering to low resolution device > (not really smoothing the pixels, just choosing different pixels for a better > result); modern OS's also do literal smoothing of fonts by anti-aliasing > (blurring the edges) and subpixel rendering (exploiting the spatial > relationship of RGB components of a pixel) when rendering type to a display > > the grid you mention constrains only the control points of the splines, the > splines themselves (the edges of the glyph that is drawn) are constrained > only by the resolution of the output device
Damn Steve, now you filled my head up with the correct explanation. I will work hard to forget it as soon as possible so I can hit YouTube tonight. Thanks! If it doesn’t excite you, This thing that you see, Why in the world, Would it excite me? —Jay Maisel Joseph McAllister pentax...@mac.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
