“Example-based hinting of true type fonts” by Zongker, Wade and Salesin
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Example-based hinting of true type fonts
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Hinting in TrueType is a time-consuming manual process in which a typographer creates a sequence of instructions for better fitting the characters of a font to a grid of pixels. In this paper, we propose a new method for automatically hinting TrueType fonts by transferring hints of one font to another. Given a hinted source font and a target font without hints, our method matches the outlines of corresponding glyphs in each font, and then translates all of the individual hints for each glyph from the source to the target font. It also translates the control value table (CVT) entries, which are used to unify feature sizes across a font. The resulting hinted font already provides a great improvement over the unhinted version. More importantly, the translated hints, which preserve the sound, hand-designed hinting structure of the original font, provide a very good starting point for a professional typographer to complete and fine-tune, saving time and increasing productivity. We demonstrate our approach with examples of automatically hinted fonts at typical display sizes and screen resolutions. We also provide estimates of the time saved by a professional typographer in hinting new fonts using this semi-automatic approach.
References:
1. Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe Type 1 Font Format, March 1990.
2. Sten E Andler. Automatic generation of gridfitting hints for rasterization of outline fonts or graphics. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Document Manipulation, and Typography, pages 221-234, September 1990.
3. Apple Computer, Inc. The TrueType Font Format Specification, 1990. Version 1.0.
4. Claude B6trisey. G~n~ration Automatique de Contraintes pour CaractOres Typographiques ~ l’Aide d’ un ModOle Topologique. PhD thesis, l~cole Polytechnique F6d6rale de Lausanne, 1993.
5. Roger D. Hersch. Character generation under grid constraints. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 87, pages 243-252, July 1987.
6. Roger D. Hersch and Claude B6trisey. Model-based matching and hinting of fonts. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 91, pages 71-80, July 1991.
7. Beat Stature. Visual TrueType: A graphical method for authoring font intelligence. In R. D. Hersch, J. Andr6, and H. Brown, editors, Electronic Publishing, Artistic Imaging, and Digital Typography, pages 77-92, March/April 1998.
