Re: [ft-devel] a hidden gem: the autohint warper code

[Collyer, Oliver, SI]

On 28 Feb 2011, at 23:10, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> 
>> however are there any plans to make it warp in the y direction?
> 
> No.  By its very nature, such warping can't happen in the `main'
> hinting direction $(Q#| you would get uneven glyph heights if you do so.

Could it not do something like pick a selection of key letters and work out how 
best to vertically warp these, using the scoring system, and then apply the 
same warp consistently across all glyphs?

Similarly to how I assume regular hinting must work, at least in the sense that 
it must do the same thing to an F and an H with regards to snapping the middle 
horizontal bar.

Ignore me if I'm talking horseshit though :)

>> In terms of whether to activate the option I would think it better
>> to make it optional, for the reasons specified above - some people
>> are likely using the light hinting mode specifically because it only
>> affects things vertically, and this might scupper that approach.
> 
> Currently it's a compile-time option, cf. AF_CONFIG_OPTION_USE_WARPER.
> 

Personally, I think as many options like this should be runtime-configurable as 
possible, so that there is maximum flexibility for applications in choosing how 
they want things to render rather than enforce a particular style of 
rendering/hinting across the board that requires a recompile to be changed.

With that in mind, how about some more anti-aliasing options - it would be 
great to be able to emulate what Photoshop does with the 
*clear/sharp/strong/crisp selection 
(http://www.zeta.net/web-design/photoshop-anti-aliasing-for-web-design.html for 
examples) ..... as a games developer, the main complaint we have from the art 
team is "why can't we render fonts like our photoshop mock-ups?"

Anyway, off at a tangent, sorry...

Oliver.

*that said, those four modes might be achievable via applying a filter to the 
existing greyscale/LCD coverage values anyway...