FontLab 4.5

the carbonized MacOs version 4.5 has just been launched during ATypI in Roma (for 9 and x). So, just a last month to wait before to put in your trash your old fog. and move to OsX.

Is there any way to import vector outlines from Illustrator to FontLab?

Stuart :D

Is there any chance to see a Fontlab 4.5 version for MacOS 9.x

I tend to use mostly FontStudio and

Fontographer and FontLab as complements.

I don't know about v4.5 but FontLab v3.2 was really a disappointment.

If you aren't so concerned about hinting the rest of the program was dumb.

Of course, FontLab is the only program supporting Unicode and OpenType and this makes it necessary.

Ahh... Why Adobe doesn't put out a super-Fontstudio?

To Answer Stuart, I think the best thing is to prepare your typeface in either Fontographer or FontStudio (from Illustrator prior to version 10 you can just copy, holding down the option key, and paste, artwork in Fontstudio character cells, don't know about Fontographer).

Then, open it in FontLab and work with hinting, Unicode or Opentype features.

Ahh... Why Adobe doesn't put out a super-Fontstudio?

If they don’t think there’s a big enough market for ATM Deluxe, surely they wouldn’t develop something for a market as small as that of type designers.

I've never heard of Fontstudio till now, but after doing some quick research, I am very intrigued, especially by its supposed "Illustrator-like drawing tools." Does anyone know if/where one could get a used copy?

'bout damned time they worked out an X version. i've been working in OSX for a year now and am sooooo sick tired of flipping back into 9. that and Poser4 are the only things that keep me from dropping 9 entirely.

anyone know why macromedia still hasn't sold off fontographer? i was thinking last night that'd be a nifty flagship product for a small software company.

I'm afraid my question still hasn't been answered. . . .

Once again . . .

Is there any way to import vector outlines from Illustrator to FontLab?

Stuart :D

stuart: currently, i believe the only thing it'll do is import EPS files. and even then it imports at 70% of the glyph size. completely unhelpful.

Patric:

Is that still true in 4.5? Or are you refering to the current Mac version?

FontStudio was a much more humane program to use than Fog. Unfortunately it won't run on newer machines or on OS9 or newer. It had a fantastic range of zoom, the bezier tools worked intelligently, it had a superb background layer facilty and it had none of those stupid sound effects. I don't understand Adobe not releasing a commercial font creation program. How do they expect designers to make fonts to use with their graphics programs - by buying Macromedia's Fontographer?

A mix of Fog and Fontstudio would have made designing a little easier when I still did it a few years back. I imagine that if I were designing fonts now I'd finish all the shapes in Illustrator and leave just the encoding part to Fog or whatever other program does that - although clearly just getting outlines into Fog is a pain in the neck.

mark: current version. it's a stupid, stupid limitation and frankly, i hate fontlab. but hopefully they've fixed some of the more nonintuitive features of the program.

FontStudio was a much more humane program to use than Fog. Unfortunately it won't run on newer machines or on OS9 or newer.

I have used FontStudio with OS 9.1 and it seems to still work okay. It definitely doesn't work with OSX (quits on startup). The problem I recall about FontStudio is that it doesn't get along with Suitcase.

although clearly just getting outlines into Fog is a pain in the neck.

Maybe you're thinking of FontLab. Getting outlines into Fog from Illustrator is a snap (at least with Illustrator 8 or earlier).

Mark: we seem to have had contrary experiences on the two issues. I couldn't run FontStudio on my G4 upgraded machine running OS9 or on a friends' G4, and I think there have been a number of times I've seen the Illustrator to Fog import issue discussed at places like Typophile where people had to go all the way back to Illustrator 6 or something to get it to work. And on a side note - I've never used FreeHand, but does/did that export painlessly to Fog?

The first font editor I used was Font Mechanic by Beagle Bros for my Apple //c, which was a plug-in for Shape Mechanic. The first outline editor I ever used was Fog 3.5/PC in 1992.

I've never used or even played with FontStudio. I was never able to get my hands on a copy. I bought my first Mac in 1995 or so (a 7600/120) to run Robofog, and I think by that time FontStudio had already gone off the market. Everyone I know who uses it swears by it. I've never used Ikarus either, which some designers (mostly German ones) still swear by. I did mess with the FontMaster demos, and some of the tools look like they could complement FontLab for certain tasks.

I didn't start using FontLab until version 3.0/Mac. I hated the drawing tools. I used either Fog 4.1 or Robofog for the drawing, depending on whether or not I needed Fog 4.1's Remove Overlap and other features, and I only used FontLab 3 for autohinting, converting, exporting, and messing with font info fields.

Then I got ScanFont. Or rather, I downloaded the demo. I took a scan I made of a page from Tschichold's Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering or somesuch and had all the outlines imported into FontLab inside of four hours, and ScanFont did a decent job of figuring out where most of the metrics were. So I ordered the full version. I swear, if you spend a few hours messing with the ScanFont demo, you'll be amazed at how well it streamlines the digitizing process. If you still like pens and paper for drawing letters, ScanFont is a godsend.

I've never used Illustrator or Freehand to do any drawing or digitizing. I have Illustrator 6/Mac (which everyone tells me is The Worst Possible Version To Own.) Its PathFinder tools are more reliable than the Remove Overlap tools found in Fog and older versions of FontLab, but FL 4.0 now has tools on par with PathFinder. I just haven't done enough font design to appreciate Illustrator's advantages. The only cool thing I know how to do in Illustrator is cross-interpolation, which I don't think FontLab does just yet. So I can't answer your EPS question, but I'll try and find out sometime inside the next month or so.

FontLab did have some irritating quirks for a long time, but it's really matured into a solid, reliable product with great support. As soon as Pyrus updates their FL4 demo download to a FL4.5 demo, it's worth a look. The drawing tools, which were its biggest drawback in previous versions, are now full-featured and totally usable.

Two years ago I found myself bouncing among Mac FontLab, Fog 4.1, and Robofog for different parts of the same project. I've now been using FL 4/PC by itself for almost a year now, though I occasionally use TransType for Mac conversions and ScanFont for batch autotracing.

I don't know what Adobe is doing with FontStudio in-house. I think they're using mostly FontLab these days. It would be nice if they could just make FontStudio open source, but for all I know there could be agreements in place that prevent them from doing it.

I am still eagerly awaiting the next version of RoboFog, which will be built on top of Letterror's open source FontTools.

In the meantime, PFAedit is pretty impressive for the cost. I installed the cygwin version, which causes cygwin to hang on my box, but I'd bet the Linux version and the OS X version (which requires X Windows) is more stable. It's conceivable one could build an entire font in PFAedit from scratch, though the idea strikes me as painful compared to what I'm used to. But it's almost on par with early versions of Fontographer, and does certain things better than TypeTool. For a free tool, I can't really complain.

Font tools keep getting better, but I think I'll always have to use more than one, and I find this perfectly reasonable. Some folks still want that One Tool Workflow, but multiple tools never bothered me.

It definitely doesn't work with OSX (quits on startup).

I take that back. I just tried it again and it ran fine. Maybe this can be chalked up to the 10.2 (Jaguar) upgrade. This is on a G4 Cube with 9.1 running in Classic Mode under OSX.

Martin: Make sure you run the non-FPU version of FontStudio. That could be the problem.

Does anyone have a feature comparison between the current (shipping) version of FontLab 3.1 for Mac and FontLab 4.5 for Windows? I just trying to decide whether or not to dive in right now, or wait for 4.5 Mac to be released. Only a month for sure?

The Illustrator to Fontographer thing really got me. I've developed several new typefaces that I drew in AI 8, but lacking the cash to buy any of these tools clean and proper, I *borrowed* a copy of FOG 3.x and tried to figure it our with no manual. Eventually I gave up and my cool letters are just sitting on my hard drive waiting for that rich uncle to will me something.

Kristian, try downloading the demo for Pyrus' $99 TypeTool. It has an EPS import feature. If it seems to work weel with your AI files, you can get the full version and just use AI as your glyph editor. I know tons of type designers who do all their glyph editing in Illustrator and just use Fog or FL as a font assembly tool without the glyph editing. TypeTool doesn't do the more advanced FontLab stuff like TT hinting or OpenType.

There is talk about development of a new font design app here.

I enjoyed reading Hrant's posts on that typophile forum. It's interesting to see that Adam Twardoch wrote a super long script for decomposing composites. I remember Fontlab doing that natively.

Going by my experience with the Fontlab people, I'm not going to buy it.

Twice in the last 2 days I have tried to purchase the 4.5 update from fontlab.com. I figured, if they finally put bezier handles in, they might have solved the "Fontlab randomly moving my points around" bug. I'm prepared to give it another chance.

I place my order, I enter my Fontographer serial, and my credit card # - both are sets of digits I like to keep to myself wherever possible. It turns out that not only is the upgrade not ready, but its more than Twice the listed price on the site. And you still don't get a manual ! Ridiculous! Now I am waiting for the team to get back from Rome to clarify the published price.

Has anyone ever called the 1877 FONTLAB line? No one answers, I tried many times when I was wanting some tech support for Bitfonter, which I am still interested in buying, once they fix the "crash on do anything" bug.

Let's take the time machine back to Typecon 2001 in Buffalo NY. Those were the days. Thomas Phinney gave me the 411 on creating OpenType (thus the OTF fonts on my website), John Downer had a spectacularly broken arm (Karma?) and Ted Harrison didn't know Jackson about the product he was pushing.

"Ted, can you tell me if Fontlab 4 will have dealt with the EPS import problems in 3"

"Ahhh umm I have never heard of any problems with the EPS import"

"Well there is a problem, have you ever tried to import EPS into Fontlab?"

"No, but I'm sure it will be fixed in 4, which is coming next month"

Which then turned out to be many, many months later. And the EPS import, as far as I've been told, is still janky.

I have a very low clown tolerance, and I would have to say that the Fontlab group as I perceive them, is Grade-A pie in the face, pants fall down, clown.

If anyone has any luck buying Fontlab 4.5, and can honestly say it makes better fonts than Fontographer (which still works fine for everything I have done with it, combined with some good free tools) I'll change my tune.

As for telling people not to create a new piece of font making software, Hrant, you're on your own there. Competition is good. I know that Robofog will be coming in a new incarnation, and that will be sweet. Untill then, as I have heard many times. A suite of tools is what is needed, and Fontlab is ddefinitely not going to be a part of my suite.

> It's interesting to see that Adam Twardoch wrote a super long script for decomposing composites. I remember Fontlab doing that natively.

Adam works very closely with the FontLab boys, plus he's a sharp guy, so I'm pretty sure he didn't do extraneous work.

BTW, 2-3 pages is nothing for code. And if you're not too much of an Artiste, you might be surprised how easy -and even fun- programming can be.

As for Pyrus support: their responsiveness to emailed* (who the hell uses a phone these days?) bug reports and feature requests is legendary. But go straight to the programmers in Russia, not some Yankee salesmen.

> Competition is good.

Only up to a point (like anything else).

FontLab is maturing, and it already has solid competition (RoboFog, and nowFontMaster). Just choose one of those three, and extend it, instead of making a fifth wheel.

hhp

Please, let me try to share my experience on FontStudio.

I am one of the few designer who has resisted and used FontStudio up to date (Miles Newlyn and Jon Barnbrook use a lot Fontographer and maybe FontLab nowadays). I've never drawn a single stroke in another program. If I wish to complement FontStudio I use FreeHand and Illustrator, and then I just paste the outlines from Illustrator.

An interesting tip: if you take any typeface, choose the H and O glyphs and set them at 512pt size, then convert them to outlines, paste the outlines in Fontstudio: they already have the correct height they used to have in the original faces.

Of course this changes slightly from face to face: I tend to use the I and O from my own Neoritmo, and do all my new types accordingly in height.

FontStudio was released around 1990, so it's really old, it's true, and buggy.

But if you use the non-FPU version (the FPU one is good only for 680x0 processors) I can assure you that with a little patience FontStudio works fine under all OSs up to OS 9.2 (that I'm using now on a 466Mhz G4).

When I installed it, it freezed for a few weeks, but I upgraded the firmware I think, or the carbonlib or something and FontStudio started working again superbly (and speedy!).

Some advice on avoiding bugs:

Under OS 9.x avoid to open more than one family at a time.

If you need to do so, use the "unpack suitcase" command, and paste the family you need as a reference in the main family you're working on.

You can keep open FontStudio, Illustrator (up to version 9, since v10 does not support the copy-paste) and Freehand, but occasionally freezing may occur.

Crashes aren't so frequent, however.

I haven't tried FontStudio under OSX but fro what I've read it works.

Please feel free to ask me anything else on my FontStudio (how I love it!)

Claudio

Does anyone have a feature comparison between the current (shipping) version of FontLab 3.1 for Mac and FontLab 4.5 for Windows? I just trying to decide whether or not to dive in right now, or wait for 4.5 Mac to be released. Only a month for sure?

I don't have a list at hand, but one thing to keep in mind is that you still can't generate Mac suitcases with the Windows version of FL. You can use Windows OR Mac TransType to create suitcases, but FL 4.5/Win can't build them. TTF/OTF files are the only FL/Windows output formats that are usable in MacOS, and only in the newest versions. So you might want to consider making do with Fog and the FDK until Mac FontLab 4.5 is finally out.

I have FontStudio (Mac) on original disks (also have Kingsley-ATF's editor [FontDesign?]) that I would be willing to trade for the Mac Chinese Language Kit version 2 (CD-ROM).

Gerald Lange

Bieler@worldnet.att.net

FontStudio had great UI, but it had memory leaks and bugs galore.

I've used FL 4.5 Win a fair bit, and I'm *really* impressed. Some die-hard FL-haters may still not like it, but the new drawing tools rock, and the new blend function is nothing short of amazing.

It's true that Ted Harrison, though a nice guy, doesn't always know some of the technical issues around font creation in FontLab. However, as somebody else mentioned, Yuri, Cyril and the crew in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida) are amazingly responsive. I've seen bug fixes and small features added in a matter of days after a request sometimes!

T

Many thanks to Thomas Pinney (of Adobe, right?) for sharing his experience.

And... okay, okay, I can't rely just on a "more-than ten-years-old" program.

Yes, Fontstudio was written for old memory handling and it surely has bugs, but if I could manage to keep it, I'll keep it forever. As long as I will be able to, I will design my letters in FontStudio and occasionally FreeHand (plus Illustrator).

FontLab is clearly the only program up to date now, but I have really to see how version 4.5 works before buying it.

As I have told, apart from certain features that are essential in a future perspective (see: unicode, hinting, opentype support, etc.), version 3.2 was terrible: you can't even open two metric windows at the same time!

I may be nostalgic, but people which have never tried the metrics management of Fontstudio v2.0 should really at least have a look, maybe on the old Mac of a friend, if they fear crashes.

Although, as I said, crashes are really rare (or maybe I'm just lucky).

> FontLab is clearly the only program up to date now

Don't forget DTL FontMaster.

> tried the metrics management of Fontstudio v2.0

From what I understand FL4.5 does the same stuff now.

hhp

Hello, Everybody!

I surfed around a little and found this Forum. It is very helpfull and i have a comment too.

I have buyed the FontLab 4.5 for Windows and it is really (like Hrant has written) the only program that is up to date right now. The EPS import works by me fine, should i say da best! I have a G4 Mac to, and i know, that in FontLab v. 3.12 the EPS importing isn't a Paradise.

But now, the Windows version of Fontlab is a rock-stable, fully customizable font creation and editing tool, and i after 6 years of using Macromedia Fontographer 4.x feel the first time, that FontLab 4.5 is the only (for now) true program in this time for digital typography.

So i recommend you FontLab 4.5...

FontLab 4.5 sucks, TERRIBLY. I have done about 15 fonts in Illustrator and it NEVER sems to import into FontLab. You would think that morons at FontLab would have AUTOMATICALLY made that a feature, but NOOOOOO, apparently from what I have been reading, they ALSo want you to purchase another $100.000 application on top of the $549.00 RIDICULOUS price that we pay for the FontLab application. Talk about raping it's users, how sad this is, this makes me want to just go download copies of it off of a p2p app and spread it around. I am sick and tired of companies taking advantage of it's users, sick and tired of it, completely and totally!

Give us a product, just ONE product that can do it all for us, you greedy rat bastards!!!

Considering its power, FontLab is worth way more than $550.

hhp

Before accusating fontlab guys, do you have really tried to resolve your problems by trying asking your question in the Fontlab forums or read the manual?

Import from Illustrator/Freehand/Photoshop is easy and reliable without any others software. Go to FL website to find fontlab forum and find an answer in details to your problem.

Jean Francois is right.
FontLab and users have to grow alike.
I might say that, being accustomed to FontStudio I'm finding FontLab quite friendly (alchough quite crammed and complicated). To answer Hrant:

>> tried the metrics management of Fontstudio v2.0
>From what I understand FL4.5 does the same stuff now.

Not even *remotely*. The Metrics environment of FontStudio is still a gem (albeit more than 10 years old).
Now, if you wish to test a face while spacing and kerning or hinting you necessarily have to generate it and use a layout program.

All I can say is that Pyrus has at least in part fixed bugs with the free Christmas update they did both for Mac and Windows.

Please, Brian, download it. FontLab has many problems, but you would have never dremed to do the things it does with the other programs. It's just a question of time (and the Pyrus developers are very nice and receptive).

Anyway, for anyone interested, you are free to use both Fontographer and FontStudio under OsX in Classic emulation.

All you need is to install non-FPU versions of the programs.

And now (with the upgrade) FontLab prints at least a line of text from the Metrics window (I'm under Os9.1, for the record).

Subject: Exporting outlines from Illustrator to Fontographer.

I guess no program is all things to all people. As remarked by others, I too use Fontographer to import outlines, then go to FontLab for the rest, but honestly FOGs "Clean Up Paths" is better than Fontlab's "Optimize".

Only Illustrator v.8 (no later) will copy the outlines to the clipboard using Option-Copy (use the menu, NOT CMD-C). They then go into FOG easily using Paste (the menu again). Be sure to delineate the character height in Illustrator by using black rectangles (one at top of ascender and one at bottom of descender) - the character then pastes in to the slot perfectly.

Notice that this does not work in Illustrator 9 or later due to Adobe changing the way that EPS outlines are handled by the clipboard. Despite what they say, this is a fact (the code for ACIB must have been changed by them).

Last comment - there is no quick way to draw characters in Illustrator. Avoid the use of the Pathfinder tools to join objects, as they do not give Postscript curves, and leave extraneous points (although FOG's Clean Up Paths sorts a lot of this). Correct Bezier curves can't be beat (orthogonal handles, minimum points, etc).
Good luck to you all - TL

>Notice that this does not work in Illustrator 9 or later due to Adobe changing the way that EPS outlines are handled by the clipboard. Despite what they say, this is a fact (the code for ACIB must have been changed by them).

I will complain more against a company who don't update a product for years than against a company who improve all the time his products.

I agree completely with Jean François. As usual.

A couple of little note about importing glyphs in FL:

1 point = 1 em unit. (Just as Photoshop/ImageReady uses the 1 point = 1 pixel relationship.) So, when working in a drawing program, it's best to work on 1000 point high pages.

Import at 100% or larger, as scaling glyphs up in FL will move nodes around in ways that may not make one happy. (Scaling down does the same thing, as well, but the results are less noticeable, for the most part.) FL acts a lot like Photoshop: once something has been res-ed down, the information is gone, and res-ing back up doesn't bring it back.

Illustrator has setting in Preferences for clipboard formats. make sure that PDF is not checked, but AICB is. Also make sure to work in RGB mode. (This may mean starting a new document in RGB mode.)

FreeHand MX is a good bridge program. Select what you want, then go to the Edit pulldown menu and select >Special >Copy Special >"EPS, converting CMYK to RGB". Then simply Paste in a glyph window in FontLab.

Best,
c

Chester and Jean François -

Have either of you tried interpolations in Fontlab yet?
I've had to go back to FOG to make a decent file as the results have been rather bizarre. For instance, very simple characters like the uppercase H have BCP handles added to them. (In the interpolated versions that is)

Funny to interpolate a Sans with a Serif, but not funny at all to try to make an intermediate weight... I complained to Yuri about Interpolation couple of months ago. I hope he will implement something decent soon.

Interpolation still provide me opportunity to use Classic and the good old Fog.

We all agree, Eric, Chester and me I think :-)

Perhaps we need to set up some joint venture or something like that ;-)

bonne nuit. (0:30 here)

>I will complain more against a company who don’t update a product for years than against a company who improve all the time his products.

Who complained? It's essential that programs like Illustrator are improved, and if Fog gets left behind then so be it! I was merely pointing out the problem that users of Fog have.

Even with PDF not checked, and AICB checked, EPS outlines do not copy into Fog -- an image goes into the background, and we all know how bad the autotrace function is in Fog.

It's annoying, though, that I have to keep Illustrator v.8 and Illustrator v.10 running on the same HD.

For a while I will be using Illustrator v.8, Fog 4.1.4 and FontLab 4.5.2 in tandem. But I hope that FontLab will eventually become the program that it promises.

TL

Updates:
Now I'm using mostly FontLab but, oh, I really don't miss the old bugs of FontStudio: Lab has plenty of them! But at least it does not crash (it crashed just 2 times in months).
The drawing interface is breathtaking. I never used a graphic program to draw type and now, with FontLab 4.5.2, there is not even remotely the need to do such a thing. It does things you cannot even imagine in any other program.

Generally I try to use each program (FontLab, FontStudio and Fontographer) in the thing they work best.
What really pisses me off is the inability of hand-editing bitmaps in FontLab. Pyrus told me you could do that and save the bitmaps back in the suitcases (that's just for Type1 and TT, of course) with BitFonter. Has anyone used BitFonter and could talk a bit about it?

I'm still very pissed off by the inability of printing serious text samples from within Lab (as I did with Studio) but I hope they will fix this.

For everyone: now I work under MacOs 9.2.1
All I have said does not apply to OSX.
As I have told previously, if you use OSX 10.2.4 and non-FPU versions you are free to use both FontStudio and Fontographer (expect some crashes, maybe). For me, FontStudio does not generate AFM files.
A thing which might interest you is that, as a basis, autohinting is best in FontStudio, decent in Fontographer, unstable or obscene in FontLab.
That's all I can say from my limited experience.
I've yet to dig into OpenType features and advanced kerning.

A thing which might interest you is that, as a basis, autohinting is best in FontStudio, decent in Fontographer, unstable or obscene in FontLab.

That's really weird, Claudio. I've found FontLab's autohinting to be much better than Fontographer's: at least FL gets the stem hints going in the correct direction. Have you played around with the Type 1 autohinting options? You can customise the autohinting quite extensively in FontLab. I often find, especially for light or heavy fonts, that I need to adjust the options to get the best results.

My experience is pretty similar to John's. Many times the auto stem widths are off by a country mile - especially for really light and really bold fonts. This is a minor problem though. A two minute job. I haven't reached a verdict yet on FL hinting. If I correct the direction of the auto hints in FOG and build some decent bitmaps I seem to get a better file. It must be noted that under InDesign and Illustrator (the newer versions) I can't tell the difference between a FOG and FL hinted font.

Seems, that hinting done locally on fonts is already part of the history. Soon, we will begin to have funny stories about this obsolete technology. Thanks to improved resolution on screens, Cleartype, Quartz, Cootype, Freetype and all others that I miss. No?

You absolutely right E. olson about Indy and AI!

That's because Adobe now uses "Full-Fuzz" technology, which ignores hinting! :-/

hhp

I wonder if Type 1 hinting can do anything at all for grayscale rendering. TT hinting certainly can.

Does anyone here still manually hint Type 1 or manually change T1 hints after Fog or Flab is done with them?

Hinting for grayscale can only be done with TT, and I still haven't seen anybody actually release such a font.

To me delta-hinting even for 1-bit rendering never made enough sense, while bitmap editing always has, especially for grayscale. The problem though is that OS support is shaky, especially on the Mac side.

hhp

Hinting for grayscale can only be done with TT, and I still haven’t seen anybody actually release such a font.

What exactly do you mean by 'hinting for greyscale'?

To me delta-hinting even for 1-bit rendering never made enough sense, while bitmap editing always has...

Delta hinting for 1-bit rendering is bitmap editing: it is using TT instructions to turn specific bits on or off at particular ppm sizes or ranges of sizes (the latter making it a bit more efficient than single size bitmap editing). The trick with deltas is to use as few of them as possible to obtain the desired result, since they are almost as inefficient as bitmap editing. The hinter's aim should be to obtain the best results possible using anchors, links, interpolation and the other 'pre-delta' TT instructions, so that the use of deltas is minimised. It is these other instructions that make hinting, laborious though it is, so much more efficient than manually editing bitmaps for every ppm size.

Increasingly, with the introduction of new rendering technologies, especially ClearType, hinting strategies are changing, and we find ourselves hinting towards particular target rasterisers. This can be problematic if the client is using a range of operating system versions, with different rasterisers and monitor types, and compromise is inevitable: you do not hint for ClearType the same way that you hint for b/w bitmaps, so a font that works as well as possible for both will not probably work optimally in either.

> What exactly do you mean by ‘hinting for greyscale’?

A TT hint instruction can be defined as applicable to 1-bit, grayscale, or both. So depending on the OS preference setting (or perhaps at the app level) different hints are deployed.

But grayscale hints are so delicate that I've yet to see anybody actually use them.

> Delta hinting for 1-bit rendering is bitmap editing

Well yes, but in a most unnatural way. It's like asking somebody "Where is you ear?" and him using his right hand to reach around his head and point to his left ear. Just looking at the contorted outlines that inevitably result from delta hinting (even though the user never sees them) one can smell a big stale fish.

> ranges of sizes (the latter making it a bit more efficient than single size bitmap editing

Yes, that's a good point.
But in practice it seems like if the range is big enough for it to really help efficiency overall, then you could use a "general" (non-delta) hint instead. I love general hints.

> so much more efficient than manually editing bitmaps for every ppm size

That's basically where I don't agree. I've only done one large TT hinting project (a set of three fonts: Latin, Cyrillic, Eastern European in a generic grotesque style), but I've done a lot of bitmap work, and the fact that the latter is so much more "natural" means you can storm through a font with little overall thought. It also makes the process seem more tedious though. Honestly, it's more efficient, especially for more complex fonts (like with serifs!), ESPECIALLY for grayscale.

Also, you don't have to do all the sizes - probably around 6, realistically. The rest is either to small to hint by any means, or large enough for general hinting to take care of adequately.

Lastly, I don't exclude mixing methods: there's nothing to stop having a font with general hinting, a few choice delta hints, and few choice embedded bitmaps to over-ride the outlines. Different given "rendering issues" can have different ideal solutions.

The other thing that the anti-bitmap people hold against bitmaps is that they take up too much K. But besides the fact that it's not true*, fonts are so small anyway it doesn't matter.

* In the MS core fonts, hints take up fully 50% the filesize! In my Arasan, which has general hinting plus 5 sizes of bitmaps, the non-outline data takes up about 30%.

So why did MS invent all this superhinting business? I think the answer is simply this: technophilia.

> you do not hint for ClearType the same way

Hinting for ClearType seems even more daunting than hinting for grayscale. Are people actually *delta-hinting* for ClearType?

hhp

So why did MS invent all this superhinting business? I think the answer is simply this: technophilia.

Microsoft did not invent TrueType hinting.

Well, maybe not invent*, but certainly adopt with fervor.

* Although they did bring in Beat Stamm virtually moments after he gave his hinting presentation at RIDT. Plus-or-minus.

hhp

Hinting for ClearType seems even more daunting than hinting for grayscale. Are people actually *delta-hinting* for ClearType?

No, hinting for ClearType is much easier than hinting for b/w or for greyscale, largely because, with the exception of a few possible y-direction deltas, everything is general hints. The ClearType renderer actually ignores x-direction hints. The reason why one employs different strategies for b/w vs ClearType is that the former might *rely* on deltas, while the latter doesn't want them. The other thing to bear in mind is that you have only seen two iterations of the ClearType technology so far (MS Reader, Win XP), and you can expect it to get a lot more sophisticated. I fully expect that we will eventually not need any x-direction hints: the CT colour filtering algorithms and sup-pixel positioning will be good enough to get consistent stems without hints.

> everything is general hints. The ClearType renderer actually ignores x-direction hints

I think you'd revealed this before - I'd forgotten about it. But frankly I see this as a limitation to be overcome.

I don't think pixel-level hinting can be ignored until resolutions are much higher. Is ClearType "good enough"? Well, maybe regular ol' b&w is "good enough" too! It depends who you ask I guess, with the end-user being the most important target - but I can't know exactly what they think, and I suspect focus groups aren't entirely accurate.

So my hope is that ClearType will improve (in terms of giving the designer more control), as opposed to becoming complacent. With direct control over the shades of gray (in ClearType especially), we can do even better - specifically be reducing fuzziness.

hhp