3 ms·

Maybe we should have a hinting equivalent for physical size then (rather than pixel hinting or an entirely different font).

by esrauch 11y ago

jacobolus 11y ago
Adobe used to have this feature in their typeface format and type design tools in the 1990s. The format was called “Multiple Master”, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts and http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silver-anniversary-story-how-the-originals-endured-in-an-ever-changing-industry/ http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silve.... (Metafont also has this feature.) In practice, type designers found that making such fonts took dramatically more work, and typographers/publishers weren’t willing to pay commensurately more money. So it didn’t see much adoption outside Adobe. As a result, the format died out, and we stuck with descendants of the original PostScript font format. More recently, many companies (but especially Adobe) ship “pro” typefaces with separate fonts for various “optical sizes”. Again, producing these takes a lot of extra work, so most type designers don’t bother with it, and because it is designed to work with standard tools (which don’t have special knowledge of the feature), typographers/designers must explicitly choose which optical size they want to use in each context. So in theory it’s inferior to the Multiple Master format, but in practice it is backwards compatible, which ends up being more important. Apple can solve this problem for their UI fonts specifically, because they have full control. Unfortunately, they haven’t offered these features for use with other typefaces.
a_e_k 11y ago
I believe that's already possible with TrueType now if the person doing the hinting is willing to make the effort. TrueType hints are restricted programs stored as bytecode. One instruction, MPPEM, requests the pixels per em. Another instruction, MPS, gets the current point size. There are also instructions to find pixel lengths across various axes. I'd have to think about the details but it should be possible to estimate the DPI and physical glyph size from those and then adjust the hinting accordingly.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  TrueType hints are not used in many contexts, or are not used consistently. So this isn’t useful in practice. Also, I don’t believe that TT hints can handle the range of letter-form and spacing changes required to properly scale from small captions up to large headings.

Maybe we should have a hinting equivalent for physical size then (rather than pixel hinting or an entirely different font).

by esrauch 11y ago

Maybe we should have a hinting equivalent for physical size then (rather than pixel hinting or an entirely different font).

jacobolus 11y ago

Adobe used to have this feature in their typeface format and type design tools in the 1990s. The format was called “Multiple Master”, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts and http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silver-anniversary-story-how-the-originals-endured-in-an-ever-changing-industry/ http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silve.... (Metafont also has this feature.) In practice, type designers found that making such fonts took dramatically more work, and typographers/publishers weren’t willing to pay commensurately more money. So it didn’t see much adoption outside Adobe. As a result, the format died out, and we stuck with descendants of the original PostScript font format. More recently, many companies (but especially Adobe) ship “pro” typefaces with separate fonts for various “optical sizes”. Again, producing these takes a lot of extra work, so most type designers don’t bother with it, and because it is designed to work with standard tools (which don’t have special knowledge of the feature), typographers/designers must explicitly choose which optical size they want to use in each context. So in theory it’s inferior to the Multiple Master format, but in practice it is backwards compatible, which ends up being more important. Apple can solve this problem for their UI fonts specifically, because they have full control. Unfortunately, they haven’t offered these features for use with other typefaces.

a_e_k 11y ago

I believe that's already possible with TrueType now if the person doing the hinting is willing to make the effort. TrueType hints are restricted programs stored as bytecode. One instruction, MPPEM, requests the pixels per em. Another instruction, MPS, gets the current point size. There are also instructions to find pixel lengths across various axes. I'd have to think about the details but it should be possible to estimate the DPI and physical glyph size from those and then adjust the hinting accordingly.

jacobolus 11y ago
TrueType hints are not used in many contexts, or are not used consistently. So this isn’t useful in practice. Also, I don’t believe that TT hints can handle the range of letter-form and spacing changes required to properly scale from small captions up to large headings.