[ft-devel] Re: [OpenType] horizontal resolution of ClearType

[Werner LEMBERG]

A small addition to the Typophile link w.r.t. ClearType I gave in a
previous mail.

On the OpenType list, I've asked this:

  In the MS whitepaper on ClearType it is mentioned that the
  horizontal resolution gets increased by a factor of 16.  What's the
  reason for this factor's value?  Why not, say, 32 or 256?  Or what
  about disabling horizontal hinting altogether?

And Greg Hitchcock from Microsoft answered:

  We chose 16 for several reasons. 

  First, we were happy with the results when using 16. 

  Second, with the supersampling, we were limited to a maximum of 64
  bits of precision. Using 16 for the supersampling gave us 2 bits
  left over for fractions.


    Werner