Re: [ft-devel] [GSoC] CID font support, and others

[Werner LEMBERG]

Hello Dave,


thanks for your detailed response.

> The initial hintmap feature is relatively new in Adobe's CFF
> rasterizers.  It does not exist in CoolType (the rasterizer used in
> Acrobat).  CoolType uses an interpreter that handles either Type 1
> or CFF in one pass.  But because it does not build an initial
> hintmap, it is able to process Type 1 hint declarations that occur
> mid-charstring.  Hint processing in CoolType is very different from
> the rasterizer that Adobe contributed to FreeType.

OK, I thought something along this line.  Given that you write

  The main motivation for the initial hintmap feature was to deal with
  distortions caused by blue zones.  [...]

I wonder whether CoolType's hinting engine produces inferior results
compared to the engine Adobe has contributed to FreeType...

> I suppose you could disable the use of the initial hintmap for Type 1
> charstrings only.

If I understand correctly, this is what Ewald started with, and he got
bad results...

> But your two pass approach has the advantage of making the initial
> hintmap feature work for Type 1.  As long as the performance impact
> is acceptable, I think this is a good choice.

Thanks for confirmation!

Ewald, have you already done some benchmarks?


    Werner