Re: [Freetype] Autohinting?

[Vadim Plessky]

On Wednesday 07 August 2002 1:59 pm, Holger Waechtler wrote:
|  Hi Vadim,
|
|  since critic on and a wishlist for pfaedit might interest the author I
|  cc'd him.

ok!

I hope I was *constructive enough*, I had no intention to bailm someone!

|
|  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > On Tuesday 06 August 2002 3:21 am, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
|  > |  > |  That is very interesting.  How does one manually re-hint their
|  > |  > |  Type 1 fonts?  Do you need expensive Adobe software?  Is such
|  > |  > |  software available for Linux?  I imagine you are getting a grid
|  > |  > |  on your screen with the glyph shown with big pixels, and you can
|  > |  > |  move the dots around where you want then write that modified
|  > |  > | font to a file?
|  > |  >
|  > |  > I use *old*, *very old* version of FontLab (http://www.fontlab.com)
|  > |  > They have ver.4.0 available at a moment, it costs around $400. 
|  > |  > This proigram is available for MS Windows, and, may be, for
|  > |  > Macintosh. It's not available for Linux.
|  > |
|  > |  pfaedit is free and supports automatic hinting also.  You should
|  > |  actually test whether it covers your needs.
|  >
|  > Thank for notice, I am happy that pfaedit matured.
|  > Problem is that when I started enhancing/editing fonts (1+ year ago),
|  > pfaedit was just not ready.
|
|  It still has a user interface that can get improved, using Gtk or Qt
|  could make look and feel more familiar. I miss a raw list of Glyphs in
|  font, it's sometimes hard to browse hundrets of pages to find a glyph or
|  to look in the Unicode book for the right character code.

Well, I'd like to see typefaces coming out of pfaedit, and their hinting - 
first.
Than we can comment what parts are missing.

|
|  Some of the 'show glyph metrics in Glyph list'-features you can see in
|  the DirectFB-example df_fonts could be a nice feature too -- they make
|  it easy to spot bugs in fonts if you see all advances, bounding boxes,
|  glyph origins on a single page.
|
|  A graphic list of all Kerning pairs would be nice too.
|
|  Another great feature would be a scalable automatically layouted known
|  long text to test a number of Glyph combinations directly in the font
|  editor.
|
|  The bytecode editor is still not available in the pfaedit realease I
|  use, but I've seen some preliminary screenshots of it. So this feature
|  seems to be in the pipeline.

I would be interested to see person who will *for free* (I mean: in his free 
time, unpaid job) hint TrueType fonts using Bytecodes..
Peter Karow (I guess I have posted info about his, very interesting book 
devoted to digital typefaces, font formats, etc.) estimates that it takes 
about 1 hour of man-work for hinting PostScript typeface (PS Type1 hints) and 
72 hours of man-work for the same work using TrueType bytecodes.
>From my experience, it takes me about 2-3 hours to hint PostScript typeface, 
even with help of auto-hinting tools. (you can tell here that I am 
*unexpereienced hinter*, ha-ha!)
Therefor I suggest that real time to hint TrueType font (256 characters, like 
Latin + Cyrillic in my case) would be close to 150 hours, or about 20 working 
days assuming 8-hour working day!..

|
|  > Also, by reading some fonts-related reviews, I found that different font
|  > experts rated FontLab at *the only* font/typeface editor ready for
|  > *professional* (read: production-quality) use.
|
|  Hmm, so called 'professionals' are sometimes a bit narrow-minded about
|  their tools. Getting used to them requires lots of time and they are
|  rarely willing to spend much time in testing alternatives.

yes, I am aware that some 'professionals' just get money for nothing.
I think about 12 months ago we were discussing Arial & Times New Roman (TNR) 
AA-rendering (that was with FT 2.0.3, IIRC)
Finally we came to opinion that Bytecodes used in Arial and TNR are *not 
designed* for AA rendering. So, while you get excellent results with non-AA 
rendering of those fonts, AA'ed rendering is really bad.

|
|  Consider Gimp vs. Photoshop: almost every graphic designer you ask will
|  tell you that Photoshop is the one-and-only program to create
|  'professional' pixel art.
|
|  No matter if The Gimp has the same or more features, and they would
|  never accept that Gimp is today better than the Photoshop they used just
|  some years ago. They are just not willing to spend time in giving The
|  Gimp a try or accept to miss features they learned to love in the last
|  Photoshop release.

Frankly, I do not like Gimp much :-(
As about PhotoShop - it's nice program, but costs some significant money.
My suggestion that if you have money to pay for PhotoShop - you should have 
it. Program is very powerful and you will return back your money, working as 
a Graphics Artists.
// sorry for Off-Topic for FT list

|
|  > It's fine with me that someone finds URW fonts of great quality, and
|  > edits them in pfaedit, but I havce different opinion on this.
|  > Do you have any reference to font(s) created/enhanced in pfaedit?
|
|  George Williams created some fonts with pfaedit, you can download them
|  from his homepage, download the source files from
|  http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/sfds/, load them in pfaedit and export
|  them to TrueType.

Frankly: I run FreeType with Bytecode Interpreter disabled.
To my best knowledge, only in this way we can get PS Auto-Hinter and PS 
anti-aliased gray renderer working, and forget about Apple patents, and 
Microsoft as well.
Are there any fonts in PS Type1 format available?
Can you take those fonts in pfa format and convert ot TTF and/or PostScript 
using latest PFAedit version?
// I am running stock Mandrake, and there is no pfaedit RPM for it. At a 
moment I am somewhat short on time, and can't compile myself this program.

|
|  Some of them he provides as .ttf's, too, but appearently they were
|  exported using an old version of pfaedit and don't contain a valid
|  Unicode mapping. If you reexport them everything is fine.
|
|  > How good they are, in your opinion?
|
|  They need work. Send George Patches against the source files if you
|  improve them, we really need some better free fonts.

Thanks, I will consider this.
Inthe mean time, I have cheked fonts at
ftp://ftp.gnome.ru/fonts/urw/release/
and found their quality is not better than original URW fonts.
Besides, I don't understand - what is the point to claim *releases* where 
there is no real improvement?

|
|  Holger
|  _______________________________________________
|  Freetype mailing list
|  address@hidden
|  http://www.freetype.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype

-- 

Vadim Plessky
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