Hi Ned --

Looks very good to me!

Cheers,

Alan

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At 10:36 AM -0800 2/23/04, Ned Konz wrote:
>On Sunday 22 February 2004 11:18 am, Lex Spoon wrote:
>
>>  It is the lack of hinting that is the real problem, not the
>>  anti-aliasing.  Though I agree that without hinting, we do not want this
>>  to be a default font.
>>
>>  For large point sizes, like in presentations, the fuzziness is not an
>>  issue at all.
>>
>>  Anyway, what is the underlying technology?  We may be able to improve
>>  things.
>>
>>  First, some people actually do have the necessary license to use the
>>  patented hinting mechanism.  Is there an option to turn this on?  Are we
>>  using freetype?  If so, then hinting is just a recompile away.
>>
>>  Second, freetype includes an "autohinter".  Are we using this or
>>  anything like it?  If not, this should be another option for
>>  improvement.
>
>I am working with Arjen's Freetype code right now, and will have something
>soon. The new Freetype2 autohinter is doing a pretty good job, and I think it
>will be an improvement.
>
>The newest version of Freetype <http://www.freetype.org> is not encumbered by
>patents, because of their autohinter (though you can recompile it to use
>patented technology).
>
>It looks pretty good all in all.
>
>By the way, the document
>http://freetype.sourceforge.net/freetype2/docs/glyphs/index.html gives a good
>introduction to a number of typographic and font concepts.
>
>See http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3192 for an example of using an older
>version of Freetype2 with Squeak.
>
>Of course, we can ignore patents altogether and just distribute bitmap
>(pre-rendered) versions of antialiased TrueType fonts. There has been an
>extension to the BDF format that supports multiple bits per pixel.
>
>>From the freetype2/src/bdf/README (with typo):
>
>---
>The driver supports an extension to the BDF format as used in Mark Leisher's
>xmbdfed bitmap font editor.  Microsoft's SBIT tool expects bitmap fonts in
>that format for adding anti-aliased them to TrueType fonts.  It introduces a
>fourth field to the `SIZE' keyword which gives the bpp value (bits per
>pixel) of the glyph data in the font.  Possible values are 1 (the default),
>2 (four gray levels), 4 (16 gray levels), and 8 (256 gray levels).  The
>driver returns either a bitmap with 1 bit per pixel or a pixmap with 8bits
>per pixel (using 4, 16, and 256 gray levels, respectively).
>---
>
>Enclosed are three samples of anti-aliased Freetype/2 output that don't use
>the patented algorithms (using Arial.ttf, probably from Microsoft):
>
>noHinting8.png is without any hinting, and is similar to what we have already.
>
>noForceAutoHinting8.png is using the auto hinting when the freetype engine
>decides it's appropriate.
>
>forceAutoHinting8.png is forcing the auto hinting for all glyphs.
>
>--
>Ned Konz
>http://bike-nomad.com/squeak/
>
>

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