Font Forum

I usually export CFF but True Type font has that feature of autohinting. All I know about that is that it does something to small font sizes, but my question is what? Should I be exporting to True Type instead because of this feature?

Thanks,

Jonne

You can see whether your fonts benefit from hinting by changing the export settings and previewing the results in the TTF Font Test Window. CFF fonts do not support autohinting. The differences may be more noticeable for fonts with fine strokes. Note the drop out on the £ sign in the example below. The CFF output looks OK too, to my blurry eyes. YMMV and it may depend on other factors like monitor resolution, Clear Type settings, etc.

No Hinting With Autohinting CFF Outlines

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:The CFF output looks OK too, to my blurry eyes.

The CFF output really is quite blurry. The box between the semicolon and the comma is a particularly good (or bad!) example: in addition to being blurry, it's severely afflicted by 'jaggies'.

Is there a way to make it looks a little not so blurry?

No, our software doesn't add hints to CFF based OpenType fonts. With or without hinting, do be aware the output depends on the software and OS you use. Windows, Mac, hardware that uses FreeType, and even software uses their own custom font rasterizer; all give different results.