ALLELUIA: Auto-hinter available !!

[David Turner]

Hello,

  I'm pleased to announce that the auto-hinting module is
  finally available in the main FreeType 2 source tree
  (see "freetype2/src/autohint") !!

  The current snapshot has been updated and can be downloaded
  now from the main server (ftp.freetype.org) or the SourceForge
  mirror. Please also download the newest version of the demo
  programs, as "ftview" now accepts the "f" key to toggle
  forced auto-hinting (a good way to compare the quality of
  the various hinters available: TrueType, Type1 & Auto).

  A few important things to note:

    - the auto-hinting module is released under it's own
      BSD-style license, as this work was done under contract
      for Catharon Productions, Inc. (see "autohint/CatharonLicense.txt")

    - we still need to update a few files (documentation, the
      Unix-specific parts of the build system, etc..) before making
      the release (and of course update the web site..) but that
      should only be a matter of a few days..

    - the auto-hinter is _not_ perfect and has known bugs. I'll
      try to create a bugs database on SourceForge to handle them,
      for now, you'll need to know that:

         * the hinter assumes that a Latin characters are available
           in order to compute global metrics (std widths & blue
           zones). If not, it will still work but may produce
           less pleasant results.. Ideally, the hinter will compute
           global metrics by parsing the face thoroughly when no
           Latin chars aren't available, but I've been too lazy
           to implement it for now..

         * oblique Type 1 fonts (through a matrix transform) are not
           supported correctly. This is a problem in the font driver,
           not the auto-hinter but should be fixed
         
         * there's no algorithm for "counters" in Asian characters,
           actually, I wouldn't be surprised if correctly hinting
           these would require a significantly different algorithm
           but this is research I'll leave for later..

         * the auto-hinting algorithm is really designed for anti-aliased
           rendering. There are special cases for monochrome hinting but
           clearly some further work is needed to make glyph bitmaps
           better in monochrome mode (some involving pixel analysis,
           yuck :-( ).

    Please let me know of your impressions, I'm especially interested
    in defects and unpleasant artefacts that may be considered untolerable
    in typography (I'm much more a software engineer than a type designer,
    as you probably know :-)

    The "type1" module is still used, and will probably be removed for the
    release.. It's interesting to compare its output with the one from the
    auto-hinter..

Well, let's the game begin :-)

- David