Thanks for the answer, Werner!
> It basically states (and very convincingly illustrates) that the
> secret to very good font rendering is to use only vertical pixel
> alignment, [...]
>
> So, let me reiterate my main inquiry: is it possible (with freetype)
> to use vertical hinting and pixel alignment only, leaving subpixel
> rendering to take care of the horizontal aspect?
The `light' autohinting mode disables horizontal hinting (and in case
of italic fonts).
I don't know which component of the font rendering chain is responsible for this, but I haven't found a single piece of software which would allow the use of the software rasterization algorithm in question. Each text processor seems to be doing diffrently, yet all have their drawbacks.
Koffice is the most abysmal:
Openoffice and AbiWord are better, but still they achieve the scalability by using variable spaces between characters:
And yet, as the article illustrates, it's easy to achieve perfectly scalable fonts, which would benefit WYSIWYG word processors very much. I just don't understand it.
Victor