Thick strokes in different sizes

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Lusavia
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:28 pm

Thick strokes in different sizes

Post by Lusavia »

Hello. New to forum and this is my first post.

For custom fonts is there a fix for over-thick strokes in different sizes? In MS Word/Excel for example, top strokes of E and F show too fat in sizes 9 and 11, middle strokes too fat in size 10 but top strokes OK. Not until 12 does everything even out, but 12 is too big for most of my needs - can't live with a font that does this in common sizes.

FYI it doesn't happen in non-custom fonts. To test I used an MS font, Segoe UI, saved under a new name and installed it, zero changes from original. The new font has the problem, the original doesn't... Any tips would be much appreciated.

PS would be good idea to allow inserting images from ones own files not just web, I could have shown a screenshot of above.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Thick strokes in different sizes

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

The fix is to enable Hinting in the font export settings dialogue. This requires the use of Truetype outlines, as CCF Postscript outlines do not support hinting.
Font Export Settings.png
Font Export Settings.png (7.71 KiB) Viewed 3332 times
The hinting added by FontCreator's ttfautohint plugin, may not be as good as the hinting in Microsoft's fonts.

To insert an image, click on the Attachments tab below the message box, and upload an image from your hard drive.
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Lusavia
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:28 pm

Re: Thick strokes in different sizes

Post by Lusavia »

Solved! Thank you Bhikkhu! I'm new at this and didn't even know about hinting - I never searched help under that term. Also I've never exported a font, just used the install option. After saving auto hinting setting, will installing keep hinting like exporting?

Also thanks re attachments, totally missed it, just was looking at top red buttons.

Thanks again - everything looks MUCH better now.
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Thick strokes in different sizes

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Export settings are saved with each font project.
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Alfred
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Re: Thick strokes in different sizes

Post by Alfred »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: Tue Jun 26, 2018 3:15 pm The fix is to enable Hinting in the font export settings dialogue. This requires the use of Truetype outlines, as CCF Postscript outlines do not support hinting.
OT/CFF Fonts do actually support hinting, but the hinting ‘intelligence’ is mainly in the rasterizer rather than the font itself. I presume what you mean is that (as implied by its name) the ‘ttfautohint’ plugin is only capable of hinting TT fonts.
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