Re: [Devel] MingLiU TT font renders badly without bytecode interpreter

[Vadim Plessky]

On Tuesday 26 November 2002 4:10 pm, Jan Slupski wrote:
|  I have question about one specific TrueType font that renders badly
|  without bytecode interpreter turned on.
|
|  This font, AFAIK, is distributed in standard windows installation
|  (on my computer I found it in:
|  /mnt/winnt/winnt/ServicePackFiles/i386/lang/cht/mingliu.ttc).
|
|  And is completely unreadable when displayed with Freetype WITHOUT bytecode
|  interpreter.

You may want to read FreeType archives.
It's known fact.  :-)

|
|  I guess you tell me that it is "broken" or bad designed font, but
|  is there anything that can be done to display it better?

Font is not broken, it's just designed in such a way that Bytecode interpreter 
is *required* to get correct rendering.
Note that printing with this font form, say, KDE3 won't work, too.
KDE3 uses Qt3 for printing, and Qt3 converts TTF fonts to PostScript for 
printing, so TT hints are lost.  And without those hints, you won't be able 
to render that font on pruinter or in GhostScript.

|
|  I'm attaching a sample of random glyphs displayed with and w/o bytecode
|  interpreter. If there is anything I can do to assist debugging this case,
|  just let me know.

What you can do it to compile FT with Bytecode interpreter enabled, than 
render each glyph to bitmap at BIG dize (say, 720pt), and autotrace each 
glyph back to vector format.
Tools which you need: autotrace and PfaEdit.
Than re-hint resulting outline font in PfaEdit, and export it to OpenType or 
PS Type1 font.  Results should be good.
But you need powerful computer for this, as MingLiU has about 22000 glyphs, 
IIRC.

|
|  I've been testing it on FT 2.1.3 (and earlier)
|
|  Thanks very much
|  Jan

-- 

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net
My KDE page
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/