Re: [ft-devel] Experimental: v38 interpreter with minimal backwards compatibility mode and linear advance widths

[Nikolaus Waxweiler]

> AFAIK, Microsoft maintains a whitelist of common fonts that must be
> handled specially, that is, where the default settings for backwards
> compatibility don't work correctly.  Essentially, the Infinality stuff
> does something similar.  If a font is not contained in the whitelist
> we simply have to trust that it does the right thing.

It just occurred to me that a list of "legacy fonts" like Arial and 
DejaVu * might actually be a good idea, but not for toggling 
compatibility hacks -- instead for routing these fonts through the 
autohinter e.g. when in light mode.

Although the common TrueType hinting practice of clamping stems to 
integers horizontally is not really compatible with the softer look of 
the autohinter and the CFF grid fitter, so I'm second-guessing if I 
actually want native TT hinting to be part of light mode. Hrrmm.