[Devel] Hinter changes

[Rayiner Hashem]

Whoa. All the hinter changes have gotten really confusing. I would appreciate 
it if someone would disabuse me of any incorrect notions I have about the 
2.1.5 codebase:

1) The auto-hinter is used for most fonts.
2) The unpatented hinter is used for a few fonts that require it.
3) The native TrueType hinter is never used.

Is that correct? Also, what happened to the PSHinter? IIRC, a lot of the 
improvements in rendering in the 2.1.3-2.1.4 seemed to happen in the 
PSHinter, and now word is that the PSHinter is broken?

I don't know what kind of results everyone else is getting, but my fonts are 
getting worse, not better. I think a lot of the effort spent on more precise 
hinting has really affected glyph shape. Part of this has to do with my 
setup: Postscript fonts on a 133dpi screen. Standard TrueType hinting looks 
absolutely terrible, because 1-pixel wide strokes are too thin to be legible. 
Also, what is the status of sub-pixel rendering? Last I recall, Ichanges in 
Freetype broke Xft's sub-pixel AA somewhere between 2.1.2 and 2.1.3. From my 
tests on the FreeType from CVS, this still seems to be the case. Lastly, my 
fonts keep changing drastically with every release of Freetype. Should this 
really be happening with minor version number bumps, or am I the only one 
seeing such changes?

Thanks for your time,
        Rayiner H.