[OpenFontLibrary] hinting workflow

[Khaled Hosny]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 07:10:58AM +0200, Denis Jacquerye wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Schrijver <eric at authoritism.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> My opinion is based on PostScript hinting; for TrueType I am dependent
> >> on ff's autoinstructor (which benefits from good PostScript hinting).
> >
> > So yes I was wondering about PostScript—are any open source fonts being distributed as PostScript? I see mainly TTF.
> >
> > Is that for compatibality reasons? I know postscript doesn’t play well with earlier Windows versions. What about distributing Opentype/CFF ?
> >
> > I’m sorry, this question must have been asked right at the beginning of OFLB…
> >
> >
> > Since you want OpenType features in many cases, I figured Opentype with truetype outlines would be the best format to deliver in, no?
> 
> PostScript outlines in OpeType fonts are fine.
> It just won't be as sharp as TrueType with instructions. But that is
> alright for some people (using Mac OS X or similar antialiasing) and
> depending on what medium you're using (high DPI device, paper, ...).
> For most people, TrueType with high quality instructions is the best.
> 
> So if the targetted use is :
> - lots of (small) text for most screens : use OpenType with TrueType
> outlines with instructions;
> - anything else : use OpenType with Postscript outlines with hints.
> 
> When working PostScript/CFF is actually easier to deal with. Edits are
> a lot faster. So you'll probably want to design with those and then
> convert it to TrueType outlines if you need to add instructions.
> Working with Spiro also make things easier, but Fontforge still uses
> PostScript or TrueType outlines in the files.

You can even have a layer dedicated to PostScript outlines and another
one for TrueType outlines, so you can work on both concurrently. At font
generation time you choose which goes to output.

Regards,
 Khaled

-- 
 Khaled Hosny
 Arabic localiser and member of Arabeyes.org team
 Free font developer