[OpenFontLibrary] hinting workflow

[Barry Schwartz]

Eric Schrijver <eric at authoritism.net> skribis:
> I do think all this shows hinting is still a bit of a black art. Am I
> correct in thinking that most projects could at first get by using the
> automated hinting of the design programs? Or is that typographic
> blasphemy :) 

My opinion is based on PostScript hinting; for TrueType I am dependent
on ff's autoinstructor (which benefits from good PostScript hinting).

The PS Private table is crucial to hinting and FontForge doesn't make
good guesses. It is a font-wide table, and cannot be broken into
glyphs. Glyphs themselves need to be designed to work well with the
Private table (and then the autohinter tends to work well), and this
requirement puts major constraints on the dimensions of glyphs, and to
a lesser degree their shapes. Thus I think that for collaborative
development there should be a person who controls hinting and who can
dictate changes to glyphs for the sake of hinting quality.

How to do the source code management matters less, and probably isn't
a great technical problem, because PostScript hinting is very terse.