New post in the series, A Graphical Guide To VTT 6.10 Light Latin Autohinting

Mike Duggan

Just in case this gets lost at the end of the other longer thread on VTT 6.10. I have started a series of blog posts.

The latest is here
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/fontblog/2016/04/08/a-graphical-guide-to-vtt-6-10-light-latin-autohinting/

mike

Mike Duggan

if anyone has any suggestions, about what they would like to see covered in the posts, let me know. The next post is going to cover editing the Autohinter output.

thanks

mike

Wei Huang

@Mike Duggan 
Thank you for your posts so far, I've never used VTT before and am about to for the first time, previously I had used ttfautohint with the control files, a tedious process that involved opening FontForge, enabling grid fit to read each point number and then a process of trial and error of shifting points up and down with a control file to see when it worked. I would appreciate some more details about common problems — I still encountered the following problems in TTFA:

• dark and light strokes (edit: including on the same glyph but over different sizes, i.e. mid stroke of 's' too light in one size range, too dark in another)
• dark joins
• inconsistent heights within groups of glyphs that should be the same (eg. superior numerals at different height, quote marks at different height)
• inconsistent height across weights
• components glyphs being hinted differently

And I'd also appreciate detail on different rendering modes, settings, and perhaps about smooth and strong stem mode in VTT. I'm sure more is possible in VTT than TTFA but otherwise I don't know about it then.

Mike Duggan

hi Wei, thanks. Many if not all of the problems you mention can be handled in VTT. I will try and cover these issues in the next post.

PabloImpallari

Mike Duggan said:

if anyone has any suggestions, about what they would like to see covered in the posts, let me know.

Hi Mike:
A few samples of hinting serif fonts too, please.

Daekwon Kim

Hi, Mike
Thanks for your new hinting guides.
I have some questions after watching the guide and using new vtt.
Before questions, I want to introduce myself. I am in Soth Korea and I participated in MS Hangul font(Malgun Gothic) projects as a font engineer. I do hinting work and teach hinting with both Fontlab and Vtt. So I know the good and bad aspects of both programs.

1. 'YLink()' with cvt values
When I saw the guides, it seems you consider DirectWrite only. If applications can't support DirectWrite, it might cause inconsistent stem height I think. How do you think about this?


2. Error on importing glyphs(overwrite mode)
I am using v 6.10 for hinting project with glyphs more than 15,000. Korean Hangul full set has the glyphs at that numbers. It's file size is more than 10 mb in unshipped  condition. In some cases it fails importing glyphs which has many points and contours. In that case it crashes and closed.

3. Supporting script
Don't you have plan to support python-like script in VTT? Till now, I used my own fontlab script that generate auto hinting instructions (with my own algorithms, not of fontlabs) and converts it into vttTalk(with vttTable format). Though it can convert link and interpolate only, I can copy & paste instructions from a glyph to other glyph and from a font to other font easily. It was possible with fontlab's power of python script. If you can support script, it can save lots of time for CJK fonts.

4.hinting support for composite glyphs
Fontlab supports hinting for composite glyphs. After hinting the component glyphs, I can add some more instructions in composite glyphs. It was very helpful for Korean Hangul fonts. We can save time by making fonts with compositing and hinting with that way.

By the way, you finally supports auto-hinting!! I suggested it 12 years ago at the time of MS UI font project. But..but....anyway, after all I, myself developed my own.

Thanks,

Mike Duggan

Daekwon Kim , thank you. yes 1. If hinting for GDI or other rendering environments that do not support DirectWrite, cvt's and inheritence are needed to strictly control stem breaks. I will get to cover this at a later stage.

2. I cannot tell what the problem here is, without reviewing the font file. if it is possible to share the file we can investigate it further.

3 & 4. thank you for the feedback on this, we will review.

Wei Huang

Hi Mike, how do I change the sample text in the Sample Text window, currently it is lorem ipsum, and secondly how do I add glyphs that are not unicode encoded to the sample text in the Main Window?

Mike Duggan

hi Wei, click on the sample text window, then go to file, import text, where you can then browse to import any text file you choose.

I am not sure you can set a glyph, that is outside of unicode in the sample text. when you are working on any non unicode glyph, it will appear in the sample text above. Let me find out for you. Unicode glyphs can be inserted in the sample text in the main window like so ~2116~  will show the double dagger

Mike Duggan

ok so, to add a non unicode glyph to the sample text in the Main Window, go to Tools menu, > Options> then in the extra text you can reference a glyph by glyph index like so, ^425^. this will show glyph index 425, in the sample text string, in the main window at the top

Mike Duggan

I have added a new post today, Fine Tuning the Light Latin Autohinter output (Part 1) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/fontblog/2016/05/27/fine-tuning-the-light-latin-autohinter-output/

Mike Duggan

a short post added in the series
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/fontblog/2016/06/03/fine-tuning-the-light-latin-autohinter-output-part-2/

Belleve Invis

Here is the sample, msyh.ttc, Stock vs VTT EA Autohint vs Ideohint-VTT workflow