[poppler] Wrong hinting

[mpsuzuki at hiroshima-u.ac.jp]

Hi,

On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:25:12 +0100
Cedric Sodhi <manday at gmx.net> wrote:

>I'm pleased to announce that a update of several packages has resolved
>this issue, among which Freetype was updated to 4.4 (I had wrongly
>stated that I already had 4.4 when I checked it while the update was
>running).

Thank you for notice. By statically built binary with the
latest FreeType2, the issue disappeard in my side too.
I guess, freetype-2.4.3 was the root of this issue.

Before freetype-2.4.2, most TTFs are rendered without
hinting, when no-hint flag is given.

In freetype-2.4.3, nameless TTF is rendered with hinting,
even when no-hint flag is given. This change was introduced
for tricky Chinese TTF which break their shapes unreadably
if rendered without hinter. Originally, such font was
detected by the font family name, but embedded TTF in PDF
often lacks its family name. Thus, there was a proposal
to enable hinting for nameless TTF in PDF. It was adopted,
so freetype-2.4.3 enables the hinting for nameless font.

Afterwards, some PDF browser users complained that still
FreeType2 hinter makes worse results for some Latin fonts
and "nameless font" is too loose condition to enable hinting
forcibly. So, I've introduced another way to identify the
tricky Chinese TTF even if the font is nameless. This new
detector is included in freetype-2.4.4, so, this issue
mignt disappear.

>Thanks for your help so far. If I can do something to help you pin this
>down for the sake of developing freetype, please do so! I also would
>like to know what is (was, lucklily) the cause of that.
>
>Cedric
>
>PS: I'm not hundred percent sure that the update of freetype did the
>job, If possible, I will dowgrade FT later and see whether the propblem
>reappears.