Re: [Freetype] Autohinting?

[Vadim Plessky]

On Wednesday 07 August 2002 1:59 pm, Holger Waechtler wrote:
|  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|
|  > Also, by reading some fonts-related reviews, I found that different font
|  > experts rated FontLab at *the only* font/typeface editor ready for
|  > *professional* (read: production-quality) use.
|
|  Hmm, so called 'professionals' are sometimes a bit narrow-minded about
|  their tools. Getting used to them requires lots of time and they are
|  rarely willing to spend much time in testing alternatives.

Ok, now I think it's time to stand up and show in pictures what I mean.
Please check following URL:
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/
I uploaded to that location several screenshots - demonstrating rendering of 
PS version of several well-known TrueType fonts (left column) and original 
TrueType font itself (right column)

http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/Arial.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/BookAntiqua.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/BookmanOldStyle.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/Georgia.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/Tahoma.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/TimesNewRoman.png
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/Verdana.png
(each screesnhot about 250KB-300KB in size)

And, finally, how my Desktop looks like:
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/vadim-desktop.png

If you want to compare rendering to, say, FreeType CVS snapshots - here are 
the fonts:
http://freetype.newmail.ru/misc/webfonts-ps.zip
(3.3MB)

As about me: I see dramatic improvement in PS fonts, comparing to TTF.
Other opinions are welcome.

P.S. Testing done with FT 2.0.9, Qt 3.0.4, XFree86 4.2.0, KDE 3.0.2, AA 
enabled, sub-pixel rendering enabled.

|  > It's fine with me that someone finds URW fonts of great quality, and
|  > edits them in pfaedit, but I havce different opinion on this.
|  > Do you have any reference to font(s) created/enhanced in pfaedit?
|
|  George Williams created some fonts with pfaedit, you can download them
|  from his homepage, download the source files from
|  http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/sfds/, load them in pfaedit and export
|  them to TrueType.
|
|  Some of them he provides as .ttf's, too, but appearently they were
|  exported using an old version of pfaedit and don't contain a valid
|  Unicode mapping. If you reexport them everything is fine.
|
|  > How good they are, in your opinion?
|
|  They need work. Send George Patches against the source files if you
|  improve them, we really need some better free fonts.
|
|  Holger

-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
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