[OpenFontLibrary] hinting workflow

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Well I figured ou what I said earlier about drawing first hinting later doesn’t really apply when you want to do it well… I chatted with a type designer yesterday, and he said, if you target the screen that makes you actually draw differently (I think someone on this list mentioned this as well). You already going to take into account that you are only going to have 12 or less pixels to make your point.

He mentioned that hinting actually is the bottleneck for new fonts for the screen, whether open source or commercial: it costs a huge amount of time, and the required knowledge and skill are rare.

> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 07:10:58AM +0200, Denis Jacquerye wrote:
>>> 
>> 
>> 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, ...).

Thanks!
I guess this is what many commercial fonts use too, no? Most of them are targeted at print use anyway and don’t seem very extensively hinted.

It does seem like the most hassle-free road to take, especially if you are new to font-design.

Op 25 jun 2010, om 13:15 heeft Khaled Hosny het volgende geschreven:

> 
> 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
> 


I think that’s a good idea… Working on two sets of outlines… Having a “screen branch’

So I guess when doing a revival you can basically choose between targetting high-dpi devices which allows you to stay more involved with the original outlines, or targetting screen primarily and adapt the design accordingly…

And there’s no reason why you can’t branch and have both, except, you double the time involved :-)