New tools for open source font development

Posted Dec 1, 2011 3:17 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
Parent article: New tools for open source font development

The patent for TTF hinting has recently expired. That means we can finally use it in all software - and a lot of fonts do look better with manual hinting.

New tools for open source font development

Posted Dec 1, 2011 20:55 UTC (Thu) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link]

Perhaps it could've been clearer, but ttfautohint is not intended to _replace_ manual hinting, but to generate quality autohints for fonts that have none at all. First and foremost, to benefit users on Windows, whose system renderer does not have a FreeType-like autohinter built-in (Mac OS X's does ... I think it's in Quartz, but I'm not really up-to-speed on my OS X architecture). But secondly, when it comes to doing manual hinting, well-done auto-generated hints are a far better starting place than no hints whatsoever (which I would call the Any Positive Number Is Greater Than Zero principle).

Nate