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Font hinting lets you move points around based on sizes, dpi and rendering modes using a stack-based bytecode language. Sure the primary use case for many year
by damieng 11y ago
Font hinting lets you move points around based on sizes, dpi and rendering modes using a stack-based bytecode language.
Sure the primary use case for many years was to cope with low-resolution but it can be used in the way the poster above described. In fact you can use it in the other direction too so that larger sizes take on more specific characteristics instead of having two fonts and a hack that switches at 20pt like they're doing with San Francisco.
Source: Have actually TrueType hinted fonts.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoSwitching between two fonts in different circumstances seems like less of a hack than embedding some kind of Virtual Machine into your font engine with all the security issues that follow.
- damieng 11y agoThe language is elegant, lets you perform tweaks down to an individual level and works across many platforms and can be used in any font. It's totally possible to create a safe virtual machine for specific uses. There have been many attack vectors for fonts over the years due to the complexity in parsing them. I do not recall any of them being due to the hinting language. The Mac one is hard coded for a single OS and font combination and a specific size down in the operating system. I disagree that the later is less of a hack.