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Bug 642395 - Improve hinting
Improve hinting
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: cantarell-fonts
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Cantarell fonts maintainer(s)
Cantarell fonts maintainer(s)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-02-15 16:42 UTC by Jakub Steiner
Modified: 2015-10-02 22:03 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
example with 'e', '6', etc. (62.15 KB, image/png)
2011-02-15 17:03 UTC, Bill Nottingham
  Details
non-bold example (2.75 KB, image/png)
2011-02-15 17:04 UTC, Bill Nottingham
  Details
Fixed blue zones (1.96 KB, patch)
2015-09-24 09:57 UTC, Nikolaus Waxweiler
none Details | Review
still getting poor hinting on 6,9 with the gnome-shell and gtk+ apps (349.46 KB, image/png)
2015-09-24 11:13 UTC, Jakub Steiner
  Details
Screenshot of how it should look like. (957.78 KB, image/png)
2015-09-24 11:58 UTC, Nikolaus Waxweiler
  Details

Description Jakub Steiner 2011-02-15 16:42:26 UTC
Especially the bold weight has issues at small sizes (8-10px). a, e, s, 6 ...

Attached is a screenshot with slight hinting. Strong is even more dramatic.
Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2011-02-15 17:03:37 UTC
Created attachment 180924 [details]
example with 'e', '6', etc.
Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 2011-02-15 17:04:11 UTC
Created attachment 180926 [details]
non-bold example

Here's a non-bold example, where the 2 and the 8 are different heights.
Comment 3 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-23 21:54:27 UTC
The blue zones are wrong for both regular and bold faces.

They should be:

Regular:
BlueValues: [-13 0 480 496 692 707]
OtherBlues: [-265 -259]

Bold:
BlueValues: [-12 0 481 492 694 703]
OtherBlues: [-264 -259]
FamilyBlues: [-13 0 480 496 692 707]
FamilyOtherBlues: [-265 -259]
Comment 4 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-24 08:46:46 UTC
More fixes. Extra blue zone for top of bdhkl (regular only because in the bold face they are the same height as capital letters) and another one for t.

Regular:
BlueValues: [-13 0 480 496 606 608 666 672 692 707]
OtherBlues: [-265 -259]

Bold:
BlueValues: [-12 0 481 492 620 622 686 703]
OtherBlues: [-264 -259]
FamilyBlues: [-13 0 480 496 606 608 666 672 692 707]
FamilyOtherBlues: [-265 -259]
Comment 5 Jakub Steiner 2015-09-24 08:58:49 UTC
(In reply to madigens from comment #4)
> More fixes. Extra blue zone for top of bdhkl (regular only because in the
> bold face they are the same height as capital letters) and another one for t.
> 
> Regular:
> BlueValues: [-13 0 480 496 606 608 666 672 692 707]
> OtherBlues: [-265 -259]
> 
> Bold:
> BlueValues: [-12 0 481 492 620 622 686 703]
> OtherBlues: [-264 -259]
> FamilyBlues: [-13 0 480 496 606 608 666 672 692 707]
> FamilyOtherBlues: [-265 -259]

Would you be able to provide these as patches? Thank you.
Comment 6 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-24 09:57:21 UTC
Created attachment 312027 [details] [review]
Fixed blue zones

Patch contains unnecessary changes by FontForge, can't figure out how to get FontForge to stop doing that.
Comment 7 Jakub Steiner 2015-09-24 10:50:45 UTC
Thanks. Ideally, for future, a git mail formatted patches are the best, describing the changes and holding authorship metadata. See https://wiki.gnome.org/Git/Developers#Contributing_patches on how to produce these.
Comment 8 Jakub Steiner 2015-09-24 10:56:37 UTC
My bad, nevermind :)
Comment 9 Jakub Steiner 2015-09-24 11:13:41 UTC
Created attachment 312041 [details]
still getting poor hinting on 6,9 with the gnome-shell and gtk+ apps

Any size I tried in ftview worked well. Yet shell is rendering the small size of the calendar widget poorly and so do gtk apps like gedit here at 9pt.
Comment 10 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-24 11:58:35 UTC
Created attachment 312047 [details]
Screenshot of how it should look like.

Have you re-autohinted everything? I intentionally left that out of the patch to keep it clean and simple. Sorry, forgot to tell you ;)

See attached screenshot for how the font looks like with my fixes, autohinting by Adobe's font development kit o-something and with gamma correction applied to the glyphs before putting them on a surface. Numbers are glitchless at all sizes I looked at.

Want my .otfs for inspection?
Comment 11 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-24 20:17:19 UTC
Oh, and I spent the day fixing a lot of point coordinates. Many curves should be more symmetrical now. Also, x-height and capital height plus overshoot are now much more samey across glyphs. Is anybody actively working on the font so that I can pass him/her my stuff?
Comment 12 Jakub Steiner 2015-09-28 19:01:40 UTC
I haven't looked at Adobe Font Development kit yet. Is the autohinter you speak of under a free software license? I fear we'll need the output fonts to be buildable the same way we rely on Fontforge now.
Comment 13 Nikolaus Waxweiler 2015-09-28 20:28:31 UTC
Hm, https://github.com/adobe-type-tools/afdko/blob/master/LICENSE.txt says Apache 2.0 license. But you can also use FontForge's autohinter, what's important is proper hinting metadata ("PS private dict"). I used AFDKO because I could, FontForge's results are fine, too, judging from the print menu.

I'll try to reach you about my other fixes to the outlines of the font when I have more time.
Comment 14 Jakub Steiner 2015-10-02 22:03:14 UTC
Thanks for the work, Nikolaus.