Gregory, Thanks for that link:
http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Main_Page This subject brings up an issue that I've been wanting to ask about but have felt tenuous, because I don't want my comments to be taken as some kind of bash. I have been developing a font for my research and publication for a number of years now, so I have more than your average user's experience in terms of how much work goes into developing a font: Developing a font - just your basic non-italic, non-bold font - can be as much work as developing any other kind of software package. There are three major tasks in developing a font: 1) drawing the glyphs (and its multiple parts...) 2) hinting 3) kerning I'm laying out this description so that everyone can understand where my comments are coming from. Each of the above three tasks in completing one font are tasks that will take many hours/days/weeks/months of work, depending upon one's experience in developing fonts and familiarity with the specific software used to develop the fonts. "Drawing the glyphs" is self explanatory. "Hinting" may not be a term/concept that is familiar to everyone - and is at the foundation of this posting of mine and an issue I've been thinking about, in terms of Scribus, for a long time. "Hinting" is the task of analyzing each glyph at each and every point size and making sure that each *pixel* is pushed/aligned in exactly the *best* location in the grid of pixels that are available at each of the specific point sizes. It is a task that can take many hours/days/weeks/months of work. So, that said, from the perspective of how things look on my system, I find that most of the additional fonts that Scribus installs, and most of the free fonts available, including the font used for the main page that Gregory offered to us yesterday http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Main_Page unusable, because they have not had any hinting applied. In other words, each glyph is very rough looking, as the font on the main page at openfontlibrary.org appears - at least to me on my system - and that is how most of the free fonts that my Scribus install adds look to me on my system: very rough/jagged, i.e., without any hinting. So, the question I have been wanting to ask for some time is "why is Scribus offering these free fonts without any hinting and am I the only one who notices that they are virtually unusable because they have no hinting?" I have been extremely hesitant to ask this question because I don't want it to be taken as some kind of bash about Scribus, because to me, Scribus is one of the most wonderful gifts I have ever received. So, I'd be especially grateful if anyone would offer any comments about the 'hinting' issue with most of the free fonts installed with Scribus and most of the free fonts offered on the web. (...and this doesn't even bring us up to the next task of kerning, which can't be applied until each glyph at each point size is hinted...) Barry McKenna
