Re: Text anti-aliasing on the Mac

Thanks for the detailed description, Ben. I think there is still likely 
some confusion in the use of the word 'hinting' in this context. In my 
circles -- font developers -- hinting refers specifically to the 
TrueType instruction set.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/ttinst.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeHintingIntro.mspx

[I'll ignore PostScript font hinting for now, which is a bit of a 
different beast but also consists of font data.]

Our experience of OSX Quartz rendering is that TrueType instructions in 
the font are ignored by the renderer except when anti-aliasing is turned 
off completely at very small sizes.

 > The constant percentage dilation of outlines of lcd smoothed text is
> essentially auto-hinting, though rather heavy handed.

Insofar as hinting is a process of distorting outline geometry in order 
to achieve particular rendering results, I suppose this could indeed be 
considered a form of 'auto-hinting', but I think the phrase will confuse 
many font developers who are used to thinking of hinting as instructions 
put in the font data and interpreted by the renderer.

JH

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2012 23:07:42 UTC