Re: [Devel] Hinting metrics

[Werner LEMBERG]

> In the grand scheme of things, I think uniformly increasing kerning
> values would do more harm than good.
> 
> A better way to improve kerning would be to keep track of errors due
> to rounding, pass them to the next level up (e.g. Xft), and then
> make adjustments at that time if necessary.  For instance, if the
> right boundary of a character is rounded left, and the left boundary
> of the subsequent character is rounded right, and further, if the
> magnitude of the errors taken together exceeds half a pixel, then
> this should be corrected.  Under the conditions just described,
> glyphs would be kerned too closely, and a pixel's worth of white
> space should added between them.
> 
> Here's a graphic showing three examples: the output from an
> unmodified freetype, the previously proposed solution which would
> increasing kerning values across the board, and finally, my solution
> as described above:
> 
> http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/kern.png

Very nice!  Anyway, I think that Reino's idea -- as presented in the
second version of his algorithm -- is still a good one: Look e.g. at
the `co' in the word `second' which your kerning patch doesn't fix.

My conclusion is that a synthesis of your and Reino's patch could
produce nice spacing.  Can you check that?

> I'd be interested to hear thoughts on the implementation.

I like your implementation because it is extremely simple.


    Werner