Re: Autohinting concerns [was: type1z vs. type1 charstringsprocessing.]

[David Turner]

Hi Werner,

> 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.
> 

Yes, these are the counter-hints, and the auto-hinter doesn't provide
a similar capability. On the other hand, the hinted outlines can be
processed through something called the "outline optimiser", which
tries to detect bad things the first pass hinting might have done
(for example, when the hole in a "e" disappears) and tries to correct
it..

I though initially that the outline optimiser should try to detect
CJK-style counters too. I don't think it will be perfect, but I hope
a few interesting results can be obtained.. Note however that this
is for a certain future though..

>     Werner