I have built a font with some Korean symbols (from range $9F to $FF) and with standard ascii symbols copied from Arial normal font (from range $0 to $7F)
Using my font, chinese chars seem to be well displayed but ascii ones are affected ! I just copied them from Arial to my own font… but they don’t display as arial anymore !
I read that unchecking the antialiasing method from windows xp menu could help… but nothing happens… still my ‘a’, ‘b’, … which are less “thick”… baddly displayed…
Sorry for my poor english and/or typography vocabulary but I cannot understand “you have lost the Hinting”… Is this an option of Font Creator which could have been unchecked, or is it a windows xp problem ?
Hinting is like anti-aliasing, but it is instructions built into the font to make it look good at small sizes. Rather than adding grey pixels it adds (or removes) black ones. Any new fonts or glyphs you create will lack this hinting information.
Please see this thread and the FAQ at the top of the support forum.
I have then two fonts : First one looks fine, the second is badly displayed.
After your explanations, I suspect that hinting option is reversed for second font… but when I compare Format > Tables content, I can read for both fonts that Hinting is preserved for :
cvt Control Value Table*
fpgm Font program*
glyf Glyph Data*
prep CVT Program*
So I cannot understand… my second font seems to have hinting preserved but a test on it (F5) looks so bad compared to the first one test.
Hinting can be removed from the entire font (Format>Tables) or for individual glyphs when you edit them. Note the “H” on left hand side of Edit window for those characters which still have their hints. If the H is missing there is no Hinting on the letter.
Hinting is used to correct shapes at small point sizes as Bhikkhu Pesala indicated. Try displaying your font at larger size and see if the distortions go away.
I don’t know if CJK fonts use hinting as much as Latin fonts.
Basic hinting philosophies and TrueType instructions
Contributed by Vincent Connare, Typographic Engineer, Microsoft Typography
Introduction
When discussing TrueType hinting it is best to think of TrueType as a programming language. > Font companies who produce TrueType all use different approaches. > Individual typographic engineers in a font company may also use different hinting philosophies. > A single type engineer may use a different overall strategy from typeface1 to typeface.
In this document I begin by discussing the hinting process in a general, high level manner, and then convert that high level description into actual TrueType code.
A note about hinting tools
Tools used to produce professional fonts are not necessarily commercially available. Software and font companies have developed specific software for their development needs. In this document the syntax used for all TrueType instructions should be considered specific to this document and / or a specific TrueType development tool. For a full explanation of TrueType instructions and their syntax see the Microsoft TrueType spec Version 1.66 (or later) or the manual of a specific TrueType editor. In addition to proprietary tools the known TrueType editors are currently: RoyalT from Apple Computer and TypeSolution’s TypeMan and StingRay.
Starting out
If you have ever painted a picture you know you start with a blank surface and sketch out the basic shapes. Then you add the tones. After that you get more and more specific until you decide the painting is complete. In general every painting is done the same way. But the details are always different. The edges are sharpened differently. Highlights are either added or not. Perhaps you will use the classic red line, perhaps not. > This is what hinting is about. Decisions.
The first thing you must consider is the kind of fonts2 you are hinting and how the separate fonts relate to the whole typeface. When the core fonts from the typeface Times New Roman were hinted, the type engineers compared all fonts to be included in the family (regular, italic, bold and bold italic). They measured each font and determined if values such as heights or stem values should be consistent through the family or specific to the font.
footnotes
A collection of fonts within a family. Times New Roman is a typeface, Times New Roman Italic is a font.
A member of a typeface. Times New Roman Italic is a font or font file in the Times New Roman typeface family.
