[Devel] QA: latest FT2 snapshot & Serif fonts

[David Chester]

Hello,

--- Vadim Plessky wrote:

> I should tell you here that quality of rendering of non-hinted font (TTF
> with autohinter, no bytecode interpreter compiled) improved significantly 
> over FreeType 2.1.3.  And it seems that it was at expense of PS hinter/AA
> renderer.

It doesn't look like the changes in the ps hinter had anything to do with the 
changes in the autohinter.

> Times New Roman (TNR) TTF looks like sharp and consistant, while two other 
> fonts have problem with rendering of 'e' (blurred top part withot hole) and 
> 'a' (too wide) - see screenshot atatched.

My first suggestion would be to force autohinting on ps fonts.  You can test 
this in ftview with the 'f' key.

If you don't want to force the autohinter, you can try applying the following 
patches to the ps hinter.  The first one implements the bluescale 
optimization for the ps hinter, and it will help with the problem of the 
closed 'e'.  It appears that this is not destined for 2.1.4, but you can find 
it at the end of this post:

http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/devel/2003-February/008889.html

The next patch turns stem width quantization back on; the patch was suggested 
in this post:

http://www.freetype.org/pipermail/freetype/2003-March/005998.html

In my opinion, more text at more sizes looks better the way it is in CVS now, 
with the quantization code toggled off.  As you get into the 15-17pt range, 
that code on has the effect of making stem weight noticeably inconsistent.  
However, at the size you are testing with, toggling the code on has the 
positive effect of giving more weight to the cross bars of lowercase e's, and 
otherwise making things a bit crisper in some cases. 

David Chester