[ft] Emboldening and then hinting a glyph with FreeType

[Edward Woeful]

Hello,

I'm a one of the developers of free open source CoolReader3 branch for 
E-Ink reader devices and I have a question. CR3 is based on FreeType2 
lib. I have added emboldening font functionality to CR3, since E-Ink 
devices seem to need some font emboldening due to the low contrast of 
E-Ink screens. It's a really nice feature to have but it does not work 
exactly I would like it to.

The problem is when I do:

FT_Load_Glyph()

with appropriate hinting flags, I already get a "hinted" glyph. Then I do:

FT_Outline_EmboldenXY()

and this emboldens my glyph OK, but it seems to break hinting, so when I do:

FT_Render_Glyph

I get a "fuzzy" bitmap of a glyph, and this is very noticeable if I was 
using "autohint" (HINTING_MODE_AUTOHINT) or bytecode hinting 
(FT_LOAD_TARGET_NORMAL). When I try to disable hinting with 
HINTING_MODE_DISABLED, it works great, since glyphs are not being hinted 
anyway and (apart from some expected "fuzziness") emboldening looks 
great on E-Ink devices.

So, my question is: is there a way to embolden a glyph first and then 
"hint" it with FT_LOAD_TARGET_NORMAL, HINTING_MODE_AUTOHINT or 
FT_LOAD_TARGET_LIGHT, so that I could get an emboldened and THEN hinted 
glyph before using FT_Render_Glyph()? I have searched the Documentation 
and forums, but was not able to find the answer.

I am looking forward to your answer.

Thank you.

Best regards,
EW