Thread: Summary of Modified Fonts
View Single Post
Old 09-07-2015, 04:26 PM   #280
John F
Grand Sorcerer
John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.John F ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 7,964
Karma: 71261339
Join Date: Feb 2009
Device: Kobo Clara 2E
Quote:
Originally Posted by GERGE View Post
Look, I will explain this for the last time and stop repeating myself from now on.

Hinting, by its very nature, is for the screens. It does interpolation of the pixels so that glyphs would seem more natural, more like print. Hinting instructions tells the renderer which pixels are to be interpolated. But the screens the hinting is designed for are all geometrically aligned and that is why analysis works and interpolation happens so beautifully.

On the other hand, eInk capsules aren't geometrically aligned, they are like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...rocapsules.png (this is from a Kindle)

There absolutely no way hinting that depends on any kind of a geometrical premise would work and there is no system of hinting I know of that doesn't depend on it. For that to happen the system needs to analysis the eInk capsules and the placement of the glyphs on the page, create hinting instructions for every glyph, and do the hinting. All of them on the fly and page-to-page basis. Our eReaders don't have this kind of resources to use effectively yet.

I have no idea why you keep telling that hinting works, that is a mathematical impossibility; anything that works, works by accident.

And about the advanced font controls, it is just a hack. Adding weight to glyphs by automation requires advanced algorithms and analysis. While Kobo's hack works, it messes up the balance. Sometimes a leg becomes thicker, sometimes height becomes uneven, sometimes we lose sharpness... I mean, it is just a fast hack. But adding weight by using algorithms of FontForge (or Glyphs, the one I use) offers much better end results. It might be destructive but no one is forcing you to erase the source.
Excuse the ignorant question, but for eink aren't the cells geometrically aligned? At 300 dpi, isn't that good enough for hinting to be helpful?
John F is offline   Reply With Quote