Re: Autohinting concerns [was: type1z vs. type1 charstrings processing.]

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > My concern has to do with global hints.  Glyph hints can probably
> > be safely ignored, but global hints turn on/off overshhoot
> > supression, in addition to giving some information about standard
> > stem widths.
> 
> All I can say for now is that it is, for now, possible to use the
> global hints defined in a Type 1 font and pass them to the
> auto-hinter (instead of asking it to recompute them).  This is
> limited to the standard width/height + stem snap widths/heights

My interest is (of course) CJK fonts -- Adobe has introduced special
hints (I don't know the names, sorry) to adjust distances and widths
of horizontal stems for such CJK glyphs.  Example:


        ';,,  ,;,,,,,,
             '' ,;, ,'
        ,,;' ,,;' ';, 
       '' ,,,,,,,,,,'''     < it is of greatest importance that
          ;,,,,,,,,;        < the widths of these horizontal strokes
          ;,,,,,,,,;        < are equal; similarly, the distances
          ;,,,,,,,,;        < must be equal
        ,,,'      ',,,


I don't know whether this is a global property, but I'm quite sure
that the auto-hinter module will often fail to properly handle this
without hints due to the complexity of CJK glyphs.


    Werner