[Freetype] FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING and "ft_render_mode_normal"

[Jeff Chow]

Hi Everyone,

I was just wondering what effects the FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING flag has on glyphs
that are rasterized using the ft_render_mode_normal flag as opposed to the
ft_render_mode_mono flag:

a) When rasterizing small (pixelsize = 10) non-antialiased glyphs,
specifying FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING seems to make the glyph look like crap (pardon
my French): for example, lower case Ns will have uneven downstrokes (ie left
downstroke shorter than right downstroke). 
Here's an example of a 6x4 monochromatic glyph rasterized on a face set to a
pixelsize of 10 with the FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING specified in FT_Load_Glyph():
0000
0###
#00#
#00#
#00#
000#

b) When raserizing larger (pixelsize = 20) antialiased glyphs, specifying
FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING makes the glyph look fine, but if I omit this flag,
certain vertical strokes will look wider (ie in the case of the lowercase
'n', the left downstroke will look wider than the right downstroke).

Is there a rule of thumb for when to use FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING and when not to,
besides having someone visually inspect the output?

Thanks in advance,
Jeff