[scribus] Fonts, worthy or not?

[Hirwen HARENDAL]

> From: bmcken at pobox.com
 
** Sorry with my bad English :-[

> "Hinting" is the task of analyzing each glyph at each and 
> every point size and making sure that each *pixel* is 
> pushed/aligned in exactly the *best* location in the grid of 
> pixels that are available at each of the specific point sizes.
> 
.../...
> unusable, because they have not had any hinting applied.
> 
> In other words, each glyph is very rough looking, as the 
> font on the main page at openfontlibrary.org appears - at 
> least to me on my system - and that is how most of the free 
> fonts that my Scribus install adds look to me on my system: 
> very rough/jagged, i.e., without any hinting.

** Depending first of the font format. PS fonts (or using PS outlines
like OTF), hinting is made with stemH and stemV. TTF (or truetype
outlines) initial hints are "transformed" into TT instructions.
Fontforge is a very good tool to do that, but for TT the best way is to
use Xgridfit by Peter Baker, and his Junicode fonts have this technology.
Fonts are programs inserting tables used by other apps. Now,
all depends how they work in your system. As Rolf said, many 
things should explain screen troubles (but not for printing).
AFDKO from Adobe has command lines tools to hint PS fonts only.
If you are Windows user, install cleartypePowerToy. This one could rule
some problems (most of them)
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx
See also here:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/step1.aspx
 
Freetype2, is a very good rendering engine...
Just  try a live CD with linux to see changes :-)
 
I don't know how Scribus uses the font realy, but how this ones
appears on the screen not depending from it, I think. Now, how
your documents are printed ?

> So, I'd be especially grateful if anyone would offer any 
> comments about the 'hinting' issue with most of the free 
> fonts installed with Scribus and most of the free fonts 
> offered on the web.

** Strangely not only free fonts !  other problems could appears with 
too many points, node not at extrem, overlaps, bad direction... 
This is also true for fonts converted as web fonts without 
followed font format specifications.
I'm working to a "new" TTF (not realy new but more to change
some Table values). The next step will be to work dirrectly with
Xgridfit into FF... under development...
http://arkandis.tuxfamily.org/fonts/Test01.zip
I'm very interesting by feedback off list
 
> (...and this doesn't even bring us up to the next task of 
> kerning, which can't be applied until each glyph at each 
> point size is hinted...)

** Not sure to understand. Kerning just rules side bearing values
between 2 glyphs like VA or WO. Generaly I make Hint at the end
when nothing more is needen and all changes and adjustments are made.
Maybe I wrong here.
 
Best
Hirwen
  		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.scribus.net/pipermail/scribus/attachments/20110405/4dfcedff/attachment.htm>