[Devel] RE: Adding options to the PS Hinter

[David Chester]

Greetings.

I think, for a start, those screenshots (the "horizontal stem alignment"
ones) look pretty good.  This is clearly a better way to implement what I
was doing in the xfthack.

There are still some areas for improvement.  For instance, in the Nimbus
Roman examples with horizontal stem alignment, sizes 8 and 9, and sizes
11 and 12 come out looking identical.  The solution is to make sizes 8
and 9 have exactly the same height, but for 8 to be a bit narrower and 9
to be a bit wider than normal.  For now, I've found temporary luck in
hard coding the heights and widths of Microsoft's WebFonts for sizes
10-15.  This is obviously not the best solution, but it works for me for
now.  My website has some examples

In addition, I've found that some careful gamma adjustments can make a
lot of difference, and sometimes can be a more graceful replacement for
stem snapping. The idea is to lighten the lighter pixels, while leaving
the darker ones alone.  For example, if the stem of an unhinted arial
lowercase "l" is 1.25 pixels wide, the rendered "l" might result in a
column of 255-value pixels alongside a column of 64-value pixels.  Here,
we could use a gamma adjustment lighten the 64-value pixels to close to
white, and the "l" would appear sharper.  The advantage to this over stem
snapping is that you don't see that jump from 1- to 2-pixel-wide stems at
around size 15, and the weight remains consistent throughout the sizes. 
Again my website has some examples.

I've just updated my xfthack page with some new example screenshots and
further explanation.  If you're interested, see
www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack

Thanks,
David Chester

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