Re: [ft] Hinting

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden>:

>
> > That's fine, but it seems, sometimes the
> > fonts look ugly.
>
> Are you using anti-aliasing?  Without that, chances are *very* high
> to
> get ugly renderings.
[...]

I have not in mind to use it.
I'm not using functions or flags that might be necessary.
So I think I don't use anti-aliasing.

I will start with this then.



>
> > Is hinting something that explicitly must be activated?
>
> You select this with flags.
[...]

OK.


What about hinting without antialiasing, or antialiasing
without hinting? And what about using both?

Is there something you would recommend?

I will start to look for the antialiasing-stuff first,
because you mentioned it as the first thing in your answer...
...so I assume, it's the most necessary thing.



[...]
> You always get best results if you first scale the picture and then
> add the glyph images, of course.

I meant: what way to go for pictures, that are likely to be rescaled by
the person who views it?
Are there best ways to go, so that - when rescaling for viewing the
picture - the text is of good readability?
Should one use different options for a picture that is likely to be
rescaled for viewing?
Can one assume "best viewing" from the image size and typical
monitors to be in use?


I have used automatic size selection by the program,
so that the text is for example 2 % of the picture size.

For small pictures it looks ugly; to less pixels there;
possibly hinting and anti-aliasing would help here.
For big pictures, if they are rescaled to fit on the screen,
the text is not always good to view.
Possibly, that's because the one viewer itself (qiv: very fast,
but maybe no antialiasing) makes it ugly.... yes, another viewer shows
it better.

But in general the problem might be always there?


[...]
> > How can I make the textrendering better, when using freetype2?
>
> Try the `ftview', `ftview', or `ftdiff' demo programs.  Press the `?'
> key to see the available options, then compare the source code with
> the one you are writing.

I didn't got them running in the first place.
I may try it again to compile them.



Ciao,
   Oliver