This goes for Masters but more so for interpolated styles/weights. Is anyone else obsessed with having even number stem and sidebearing values? (e.g. 30pt vs. 31 or 33pt) I know it's not always possible/desirable, being that in hairline weights the vertical/horizontal stems usually have a difference of only 1pt. (e.g. Hor=4pt Ver=5pt)
Further, I know many kern in incremental values of 5pts, I imagine some do as well in values of 2pts, but does anyone further use a Round Transformation on interpolated styles/weights in MetricsMachine to clean up kerning values and ensure they round to values of 2, or 5pt?
Comments
Rounding stem values would require a tool that measures individual stems and adjusts interpolation values accordingly.
I do with increments of 1unit or more, personally. As long as identical sidebearings have the same kerning value, the rest looks like arbitrary restrictions to me unless I'm missing something.
It just looks 'cleaner' and seems more disciplined when seeing kerning/stem/sidebearing values that are even number values and/or rounded values. Functionality-wise it's pretty trivial, and process-wise any of this is maybe a bit obsessive-compulsive.
In summary, assuming it doesn't interfere with the perfection of a design in any direction, black or thin, simple or complex, I think the benefits of quantizing contours include; mathematical simplicity during analysis and design, sizability advantages for file reduction, advantages related to font sizing at low resolutions, and those rare synch-ability issues related to frames per second when type is being animated, the later of which, is a distant offsprung of Superpolation's rounding issues.
I agree with the apparent consensus that there are two widely separate camps on this. Camp A has the kings and queens of high resolution, who don't rightly care about the relationship between input, (in units per em), and output (hopefully in 1,000s of pixels per inch)... pretty much ever, and Camp B where some level of obsession with the relationship between input and output exists because there is less than 300 pixels per inch in the device(s) involved in displaying the type most of the time, and/or the type is small much of the time.
An then, in a middle, Camp C, are those just arriving or moving from one camp to the other with their possessions. If you meet a tool-maker, make sure they're in Camp B, as you can use Camp B tools perfectly well to make Camp A fonts.:)