@TiroTypeworks how would you recommend learning how to hint fonts for a beginner?
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@jlarmstrongiv It’s helpful to begin with an understanding of why TrueType hinting has been important and may remain important in some situations. Even though the nature of hinting has changed to adapt to different rendering models and device resolutions, such that some things we used to do are no longer relevant, understanding the background and some of the history is also helpful to make sense of the TT instruction set, and which parts are relevant to a project.
With that in mind, I would begin by reading Beat Stamm’s ‘The Raster Tragedy at Low-Resolution Revisited’ (an updated version of his original paper from the 1990s).
@jlarmstrongiv After that, I would recommend picking a tool, read the basics in the documentation for that tool, and quickly start trying to hint a font. If you’re like me, you will learn most from experimenting with the instruction set as implemented in the tool and seeing what effect different things have on the rendering across sizes.
[Bear in mind that some tools might abstract the instruction set to higher level controls that don’t have the same labels as the TT/OT table specs.]
@jlarmstrongiv One of the most important factors in TrueType rendering is the gasp table.* Determining appropriate gasp table settings for a font is very important, and will have a major impact on how it renders.
I recommend reading Mike Duggan’s article on gasp table settings:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/fontblog/the-gasp-table
* I am presuming, here, environments that pay at least some attention to hinting and associated font data when rendering text. Apple mostly do not, instead relying on strong antialiasing and their control over the hardware. Companies like Microsoft continue to use hinting because they are targeting a much broader range of device resolutions and qualities.
@jlarmstrongiv Note that both Beat and Mike’s articles date, in their latest iteration, from 2018. That roughly marks the date at which text rendering had stabilised in its current state, and there hasn’t been any major changes since then. People still periodically ask whether hinting is still necessary, and the answer remains that this depends on the target environment, the script, and ultimately the individual typeface design.
