What exactly does autohinting do?

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Jonne Haven
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What exactly does autohinting do?

Post by Jonne Haven »

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
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: What exactly does autohinting do?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

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
No Hinting.png
No Hinting.png (20.55 KiB) Viewed 5579 times
With Autohinting
Autohinting.png
Autohinting.png (19.86 KiB) Viewed 5579 times
CFF Outlines
CFF Outlines.png
CFF Outlines.png (21.11 KiB) Viewed 5578 times
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Alfred
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Re: What exactly does autohinting do?

Post by Alfred »

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'.
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FatherLuke
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Re: What exactly does autohinting do?

Post by FatherLuke »

Is there a way to make it looks a little not so blurry?
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Re: What exactly does autohinting do?

Post by Erwin Denissen »

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.
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