Font Forum

There is a certain font that I use that turns into hieroglyphs when I print. It looks fine on screen, but when I print it, it scrambles and smears itself.
Here is how it happens:
Using LaTeX, I generate a pdf using this font.
This pdf looks just fine on screen and prints just fine.
However, if I place this pdf in an InDesign file and export to pdf, THEN it creates hieroglyphs when it prints (looks fine on screen).

If I use a different font I don't have this problem, so I know the problem lies with the font.

Now, I believe this problem is due to some kind of font hinting.
How can I fix broken font hinting?

Here is an image of what happens:

If it looks fine on screen, but not when printed, then it has nothing to do with hinting.

Hinting is only used for smoothing text on low resolution devices like monitors, and is disregarded when printing.

Mr. Pesala,

Well, maybe its not hinting, but *something* is wrong with it! I printed it and scanned the print and included an image of what prints.

I would still like to try removing the hinting anyway. I can't find anything in Font Creator called "hinting" though.


Would these Metrics make any difference? Actually, there are no "Smoothing" properites. Is this the same as "hinting"?

Try running the font validator to remove off-curve extremes.

The hinting options are on the Export Settings dialogue.

Thanks.
I've done both things, actually.
I exported the font without any hinting, and the validator passes 100%.

I think I've resolved it.
I exported the font with hinting off.
There were no hieroglyphs after that, but it was kind of ugly on the screen,
so I set hinting back to auto and exported the font again.
I think that fixed the problem, as I'm not getting hieroglyphs now.