![]() Although the program is actively maintained, I still found it crashing periodically in Windows 7 and Windows 8. And while I’m betting that it can be used by deft hands to craft a font equal to one made in Fontlab Studio, its major drawback is its instability. I’ve had success making some basic fonts with it (such as my Arpa icon font for this website). FontForge is precisely that-a free editor lovingly crafted by the open-source dwarves in the fires of Linux Mountain (aka George Williams).įontForge seems to meet the need of a basic font editor, and I’ve found it to be powerful and intuitive. When I’m looking for anything, my first outreach is to the open-source community to see what’s developed organically. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to afford Fontlab Studio, but these are my initial impressions for FontForge, FontCreator, and Fontlab’s TypeTool. So I’m testing out what I’m calling Tier-I font editors (cheap/free editors). But with this being an experimental endeavor at its core, I’m just not yet ready to spend that. That’s nothing unreasonable, as I am no stranger to the high cost of design software. Texts Rasterization Exposures Article from the Anti-Grain Geometry Project.Choosing a Font Program: Comparison of Tier-I Editors February 26, 2013Ī quick search has led me to believe that Fontlab Studio is the standard for font editors, as evidenced by their boast that Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and everyone and their grandma uses it.Tutorial on the DejaVu font wiki Archived at the Wayback Machine.A revised and extended version of the original 1998 article covering anti-aliasing including sub-pixel rendering, opportunities made possible by anti-aliasing, challenges in the rasterizer and elsewhere, and a discussion of font hinting in the context of these opportunities and challenges. The Raster Tragedy at Low-Resolution Revisited: Opportunities and Challenges beyond "Delta-Hinting"."Typotheque: Font hinting article on Typotheque by Peter Biľak". ^ "Georgia & Verdana - Typefaces designed for the screen (finally)".As a result Apple's Quartz text renderer, which is targeted for Apple's Retina displays, now ignores font hint information completely. With the advent of high-DPI displays (generally considered to be displays with more than 300 pixels per inch), font hinting has become less relevant, as aliasing effects become un-noticeable to the human eye. Particular attention should be paid to the cap height, x-height, and baseline, so that the font retains its normal character while not producing exaggerated effects at small sizes. The reference manual suggests that, for screen viewing, fonts should be readable at 9 pixels per em at 72 pixels per inch. At large sizes, the subtlety of the original design should emerge.At small sizes, chance effects should not be allowed to magnify small differences in the original outline design of a glyph.Guidelines Īccording to the TrueType Reference Manual, font instructors (those performing font hinting) must balance the following two constraints when hinting a font: ![]() As of 2011, the FreeType website states that the relevant font hinting patents have now all expired, and hinting is now enabled in FreeType by default. The open-source FreeType 2 font rendering engine uses an auto-hinter when such hinting data are not present or their use is restricted by a software patent. One aspect of TrueType hinting is grid-fitting, which modifies the height and width of font characters to line up to the set pixel grid of screen display. In the TrueType font format, released in 1991 by Apple Inc, hinting invokes tables of font data used to render fonts properly on screen. Verdana is one example of a font that contains a large amount of hinting data, much of which was accomplished manually by type engineer Tom Rickner. However, high-quality commercial fonts are often manually hinted to provide the sharpest appearance on computer displays. Most font editors are able to do automatic hinting, and this approach is suitable for many fonts. A font can be hinted either automatically (through processed algorithms based on the character outlines) or set manually. Hints are usually created in a font editor during the typeface design process and embedded in the font. For the purpose of on-screen text display, font hinting designates which primary pixels are interpolated to more clearly render a font.
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