Re: [ft] Bytecode hinter producing bad results, seems to be a regression

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> The trickyness is that you are trying to separate hinting
>> from rasterizing.  As explained already, the TrueType
>> bytecode interpreter and the rasterizer do interact.  It's
>> not intended to be handled separately.
> 
> I went through the trouble of tweaking my 3rd party library to
> support rendering with FreeType...and the result was identical to
> when I extract the outlines with FreeType and render things myself!
> So I guess my font sucks?  Where are the good fonts?

You might look at the original Helvetica font from Adobe, or its
freely available clone from URW, `Nimbus Sans', which comes with
Ghostscript.  Those fonts use PS hinting technology, not TrueType.

>> No, no, no!  The Kaiti font is *not* a TrueType font (this is,
>> second-order Bezier curves).  It's an *OpenType font* using CFF
>> outlines (this is, third-order Bezier curves), and there aren't any
>> bytecode instructions but PS-like hints.
> 
> Oh my...why did they make fonts so confusing?

Historical development.  You might read this old article:

  http://www.truetype-typography.com/articles/ttvst1.htm

The English article on Wikipedia about OpenType gives further hints
too.

      Werner