Re: [Devel] autohinter suggestions

[David Turner]

Hello David,

David Chester wrote:

> On my website, I have made some suggestions with explanations, examples, and 
> patches for improvement to the autohinter.  Here's a brief summary of the 
> changes I propose.
>
> * Outlines are scaled before edge hinting so that edges corresponding to 
> AH_BLUE_SMALL_TOP are already lying on a pixel boundary (this helps to 
> minimize shape distortion);
>
> * A new algorithm for stem alignment when stem widths are less than 1.5 pixels 
> wide centers the stem slightly off-center of the center of a pixel (this 
> increases sharpness and consistency);
>
> * There's a new hinting target which disables the snapping and alignment of 
> vertical stems, and serif widths are left alone completely;
>
> * There's a new blue zone for the tops of letters like i,j,k,l,b,d, etc.
>
> Again, my website has more explanation, examples and patches.  It's at:
> http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack
>
> I would be interested in peoples' thoughts and criticisms
Well, I've tested it on various monitors, the results are:

 - on LCD screens, the improvement is a definitive improvement !
    Congratulations

 - on CRT screens, there is no visible difference at high resolutions
   (like 1024x768), but it's slightly better at 640x480 and 800x600

For some reason, your patch doesn't seem to apply to the current CVS 
sources.
Could you re-generate it quickly ? If not, I'll try to apply it manually 
tonight..

I'd also like to test-proof it against a large number of fonts to see if 
it doesn't
distort some rather popular ones in new and funny ways. If it does, I'll 
probably
release 2.1.4 as soon as possible, to be able to experiment with it for 
the next
release.. If not, it will be part of 2.1.4 which should come soon anyway..

Best Regards,

- David Turner
- The FreeType Project  (www.freetype.org)