A wish list for Fontlab new version

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Christopher Fyn » Mon, 23 Oct 1995 04:00:00



     1.  Ability to set leading / line spacing value
     2.  Ability to edit all values in TrueType tables
     3.  Support for new TrueType Open tables including
         mapping tables, language codes, glyph substitution, etc.
     4.  Better PS to True type conversion -
         metrics should match in both versions of font
     5.  Support for CID Keyed font files
     6.  Support for larger and DBCS character sets
     7.  multi level undo




>         I have heard that the next version of FontLab for Windows
>         will be avalable sometime next year hopfully in the bigning
>         of the next years. Therefore, I would like to suggest you
>         (FontLab users) to list your wish-list of fetures that you
>         wish to see on next version. Here I start.

>         1. To add multi do and undo
>         2. an option of installing the TTF to windows
>         3. an option of merging or compining a font to an open one.
>         4. printing a sample of text (a whole page)
>         5. restore the shape to it original state if I'm not satisfy
>            with the changes I've made
>         6. cutting or spliting the shape into two halves without
>            losing any details
>         7. controling the leading (space between the above and
>            next line of the font

>         Hope I'm not asking too muth

--

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by William F. Ada » Tue, 24 Oct 1995 04:00:00


For my part, I want the ability to generate TrueType Open,
and/or QuickDraw/GX Fonts, also Multiple Master Fonts.

I want access to the Trademark Field, at least to add to it - I
can understand why one would wish to limit the ability to
change it - perhaps the same should be done with the copyright
field...

I want full internationalization tables to facilitate transfer
of TTF's to the Mac, and would like to be able to create Mac
fonts directly.

I'd like to have a bitmap font editor, able to write Mac screen
fonts and Windows .Fons

A character library for when working on a tremendously
complicated face would be nice,

A manual which is nicer to look at, one put together with
typographic aesthetics in mind. Use left and right quotes,
something other than default line-spacing and Times... color
screen shots would be nice, or at least a spot color. An
on-line version, say an Adobe .PDF would be easy to create and
would be wonderful to have for those of us who work on laptops.

A quick and dirty way of assigning Adobe Standard Encoding
would be nice - Type Designer uses a check box, and I find that
very convenient.

With all that, let me add one thing which I do NOT want -
please do NOT make it a Win95 specific application! Win32 would
be okay, but please do not force me to find another tool simply
because I cannot move to Windows 95 at this time.

William

PS - Oh yes, further information on how to create foreign
language fonts would be a nice addition to the manual.

---
William Adams
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Christopher Fyn » Tue, 24 Oct 1995 04:00:00




> >For my part, I want the ability to generate TrueType Open,
> >and/or QuickDraw/GX Fonts, also Multiple Master Fonts.

> Perhaps we can get it to cure piles. MM is rumoured to be included in
> the new version. It is unlikely that any Windows based program is
> going to be making QuickDraw/GX fonts in the near future, as GX is
> Apple's very own new toy. Since Microsoft have yet to make available a
> cheap, easy to use tool for basic TT, it is unlikely that FontLab will
> be able to tackle TTO. I wouldn't even bother producing TT from
> FontLab, Fontographer or any other such program; what's the point of
> hinting TT with Type 1 hinting tools?

TT Open just adds some extra tables to the basic TT font format
other than the ability to have a non zero baseline (ie for
indic script fonts) these shouldn't affect the glyph editing
window. It shouldn't be too difficult to add some support for
adding these extra tables - though a way of visually inputting
some of the data rather than simply entering numeric or text
values would require a little more work.

TypeDesigner seems to do a fair job of translating Type 1 hints
to simple TT hints - and FontLab should at least include this
level of TT hinting. TypeDesigner also seems to create = metrics
for TT and Type 1. With a TD created font my line breaks remain
exactly the same whether I use a Type 1 or TT version of the font.

FL (and FOG) generated fonts cause different line breaks
depending on whether you use a TT or Type 1 version of the font.

I would also like to see support for generating CID keyed font files.

Quote:> I'm in favour of most of your other suggestions. Is Ted Harrison still
> online in these parts?

--

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Berthold K.P. Ho » Thu, 02 Nov 1995 04:00:00



   >I wouldn't even bother producing TT from
   >FontLab, Fontographer or any other such program; what's the point of
   >hinting TT with Type 1 hinting tools?

   Why shouldn't that work? TrueType hinting is a superset of every other
   hinting scheme on Earth...

What nonsense.

TrueType hinting is imperative, while Type 1 hinting is declarative.
It's the difference between having to give detailed step by step
instructions versus only writing down a number of rules or constraints.

TT hinting is lower level and more primitive than T1 hinting.
And there is no automated way to translate from one to the other.
In fact, font conversion utilities drop the original hints and generate
new `auto' hints for the output format.  Automatically generated
hints are never as good as carefully hand-tuned hints.  For a start,
most auto-hinting does not support hint replacement --- which for
some glyphs is crucial.

Yes, *theoretically* programming at a very low level allows you to
do anything you want, but at the same time this generality makes it
hard to do what is really needed in hinting.
One `advantage' of TT hinting is that you can control individual pixels at a
given ppem (pixel per em) resolution.  The disadvantage is that you have to!

The biggest labour in TT hinting is to control `drop outs' (missing pixels).
You have to look at all glyphs in the font at all ppem you expect any user
to ever use and check for these and knock them out individually.  
T1 rasterizing does not create drop-outs (unless you purposefully mis-hint!).

One way you can tell how hard it is to properly hint TT fonts versus T1
fonts is to get a quote from a commercial outfit that does quality
work.  For TT fonts, quality hinting costs typically (depending on
complexity of the shapes) $15 - $45 per glyph (and approximately *one* place
in the US does quality TT hinting work...).  Commercial grade T1 hinting
costs considerably less per glyph.

Which is why there are very few properly hinted TT fonts --- except from the
big boys --- namely MicroSoft (who is apparently getting out of the font
business) and Apple.

As for automatic conversion, a reviewer once claimed that the conversion
in Type Designer was particularly good.  He must have been dreaming,
since in one direction TD actually *drops* all hints (or at least did in the
version he was reviewing)!  Despite this, his opinion has been quoted again
and again as if it were fact.  Not too surprising, I suppose, since tools for
carefully looking at hinting are hard to find.

The automatic conversion in Windows NT from T1 to TT format is actually
better IMHO. Nevertheless, even the untrained eye can see a clear
deterioration in on-screen rendering when a commercial grade T1 font is auto
converted to TT by Windows NT.  Of course, with junk fonts there will be no
difference (and if they are *really* bad, the converted result will actually
look better, since auto hinting is typically better than no hinting at all)

Regards, Berthold.

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Gunars Lucan » Thu, 02 Nov 1995 04:00:00



Quote:>...
>As for automatic conversion, a reviewer once claimed that the conversion
>in Type Designer was particularly good.  He must have been dreaming,
>since in one direction TD actually *drops* all hints (or at least did in the
>version he was reviewing)!  Despite this, his opinion has been quoted again
>and again as if it were fact.  Not too surprising, I suppose, since tools for
>carefully looking at hinting are hard to find.
>...

The claim I've usually seen for TD is that existing Type1 hints are converted
to TT hints instead of being deleted and replaced with autogenerated TT hints.
I've also heard that this T1 to TT conversion can be done fairly accurately.  
In other words, converting a T1 font with good hinting to TT with Type Designer
should produce a font with the same hinting quality as the original.  From what
you've explained about TT hinting, it sounds likely that the resulting TT font
may have problems at various ressolutions since the conversion process probably
doesn't do the tweaking at each ppem.

By the way, I've never heard TypeDesigner claim that it preserves anything but
the outline when traveling from TT to T1; in fact, it doesn't even read TTF
files, but gets character outline info via Windows API calls.  I believe this
is still true in TD 3.0.

--

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Lawrence D'Olivei » Thu, 02 Nov 1995 04:00:00



>I wouldn't even bother producing TT from
>FontLab, Fontographer or any other such program; what's the point of
>hinting TT with Type 1 hinting tools?

Why shouldn't that work? TrueType hinting is a superset of every other
hinting scheme on Earth...
 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Neil Beshoor » Thu, 02 Nov 1995 04:00:00



<much deleted>

Quote:> As for automatic conversion, a reviewer once claimed that the
> conversion in Type Designer was particularly good.  He must have been
> dreaming, since in one direction TD actually *drops* all hints (or at
> least did in the version he was reviewing)!  Despite this, his opinion
> has been quoted again and again as if it were fact.  Not too

surprising, > I suppose, since tools for carefully looking at hinting are
hard to > find.

Berthold,

You went through great legths on every point *but* describing how bad
Type-Designer is at automatic conversions.
Type-Designer has never had Auto Hinting features [though the new version
3.0 does have these]. However it still maintains manual hinting features,
and the results can be seen on screen immediately.

Can you expand on how Type-Designer *drops* all hints in one direction? I
would like to know about that as I am the distributor of this product in
the UK, and I'm not dreaming when I say that my fonts look better using
Type-Designer than other commercially available tools. I don't think
anyone would say that a $120 tool can compete with Delta hinting or
professional fonts from large foundries

Neil Beshoori / NRB Systems
Tel: + 44 181 570 3034

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Gunars Lucan » Fri, 03 Nov 1995 04:00:00



>Can you expand on how Type-Designer *drops* all hints in one direction?

I assume Berthold meant that TypeDesigner retains nothing but the basic
outline when converting from TrueType to Type1.  As far as I know, this is
still true in TD 3.0 (nor am I surprised since I understand that mapping TT
hints to T1 is next to impossible).  It did surprise me though when I first
looked at TD earlier this year when I needed to add a few accented
characters to TT Arial.  Not only were the original hints lost but TD 2.6
had no autogenerated replacements; the resulting font was worse than what I
was getting out of FontMonger which at least had some autohinting.  Yes, I
know, TD 3.0 will have autohinting -- I've been waiting for it since
August :-).

--

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Mark P. Fishma » Fri, 03 Nov 1995 04:00:00



>Can you expand on how Type-Designer *drops* all hints in one direction? I
>would like to know about that as I am the distributor of this product in
>the UK, and I'm not dreaming when I say that my fonts look better using
>Type-Designer than other commercially available tools. I don't think
>anyone would say that a $120 tool can compete with Delta hinting or
>professional fonts from large foundries

Neil:

I believe that Berthold's point was that TD drops
hints when importing a TrueType font. Thus if the
user is converting a TT font to Type 1, the hints
are lost. TD's native format is Type 1, and thus
the hints are retained when opening or "importing"
a Type 1 font. These hints will be converted to
equivalent TrueType hints if *exporting* (converting)
to TrueType format.

So T1 --> TT retains hints (if any), but TT --> T1
loses hints.

Cheers -- Mark F.

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Christopher Fyn » Fri, 03 Nov 1995 04:00:00




Quote:> Type-Designer has never had Auto Hinting features [though the new version
> 3.0 does have these]. However it still maintains manual hinting features,
> and the results can be seen on screen immediately.

Yes TD's hinting results can be seen on screen immediatly and, even for
Type 1, fonts the program seems to be using the Windows TT rasterizer
to generate the screen previews of the characters as ATM is not
neccesary for this.

I can understand a font editor losing all hints when converting
from TrueType to Type 1 - which hints would you use?
It should be much easier to translate Type 1 hints into some
kind of TT hints.

--

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Neil Beshoor » Fri, 03 Nov 1995 04:00:00



Quote:

> I assume Berthold meant that TypeDesigner retains nothing but the basic
> outline when converting from TrueType to Type1.  As far as I know, this
> is still true in TD 3.0 (nor am I surprised since I understand that
> mapping TT hints to T1 is next to impossible).  It did surprise me
> though when I first looked at TD earlier this year when I needed to add
> a few accented characters to TT Arial.  Not only were the original
> hints lost but TD 2.6 had no autogenerated replacements; the resulting
> font was worse than what I was getting out of FontMonger which at least
> had some autohinting.  Yes, I know, TD 3.0 will have autohinting --
> I've been waiting for it since August :-).

The original descritption that Berthold referred to was

"Type-Designer is the only program available on the PC that
correctly converts Type 1 fonts into TrueType. All other programs
distort the original letterforms and lose the original hints, but
TrueType fonts generated by Type-Designer are virtually
indistinguishable from the original Type 1 designs even at small
sizes and low resolutions."

Anyway, TD3.0 has been released in the UK, and US will follow shortly. It
does support AutoHinting including * Auto Hint Replacement*. It uses
Windows functions to extract outlines out of TTF fonts, hence the hints
are missing.

Incidentally, the creator of TD has never been happy with AutoHinting
algorithms as tehy can never be as good as manual hints.

Neil Beshoori / NRB Systems
Tel: + 44 181 570 3034

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Laurence Penn » Mon, 06 Nov 1995 04:00:00



Quote:>TT hinting is lower level and more primitive than T1 hinting.
>And there is no automated way to translate from one to the other.
>In fact, font conversion utilities drop the original hints and generate
>new `auto' hints for the output format.  Automatically generated
>hints are never as good as carefully hand-tuned hints.  For a start,
>most auto-hinting does not support hint replacement --- which for
>some glyphs is crucial.

You're right that TT hints and T1 hints cannot be directly compared - they're
not the same things. But if you take "font + ATM", or "font + printer", as the
complete hinting entity, then TrueType can emulate their behaviour exactly.

Quote:>Yes, *theoretically* programming at a very low level allows you to
>do anything you want, but at the same time this generality makes it
>hard to do what is really needed in hinting.
>One `advantage' of TT hinting is that you can control individual pixels at a
>given ppem (pixel per em) resolution.  The disadvantage is that you have to!
>The biggest labour in TT hinting is to control `drop outs' (missing pixels).
>You have to look at all glyphs in the font at all ppem you expect any user
>to ever use and check for these and knock them out individually.  
>T1 rasterizing does not create drop-outs (unless you purposefully mis-hint!).

I examined some TrueType fonts from Bitstream recently, looking for the TrueType
instructions DELTA (move ranges of points or control values), MPPEM (measure
ppem) and MPS (measure point size). I understand these are the only ones that
mean glyphs are treated differently depending on their PPEM. Although I must
stress this was nothing like an exhaustive search, I didn't find those
instructions in any of the glyphs I looked at. The instructions present were
generally concerned with moving, aligning and interpolating points.

However, in the 'prep' font table, which contains instructions to be executed
before the scan conversion of each glyph, I found the SCANCTRL instruction.
Together with its parameter of 0x0164, this means: "always to do dropout control
below 100 (=0x64) pixels per em". In this mode, the TT rasterizer performs much
like a Type 1 rasterizer.

Quote:>Which is why there are very few properly hinted TT fonts --- except from the
>big boys --- namely MicroSoft (who is apparently getting out of the font
>business) and Apple.

I am sure Bitstream would argue their fonts are "properly hinted". In the
absence of any TrueType hinting police, one has to judge by the results. In my
experience Bitstream's TrueTypes are inferior on screen to Monotype's, but
certainly no worse than ATM fonts.

One point that does favour Type 1 over TrueType is the adaptability of the fonts
to future technology. New hinting techniques (such as that which sadly died with
Sun's F3 format), can be built into forthcoming PS rasterizers and exploit the
existing declarative hints to the full. Dumb, mechanical TrueTypes are committed
to supplying precisely the same glyph bitmaps until the end of time.

Accountants of the world! Don't forget to depreciate your TrueTypes!!

-- Laurence Penney

 
 
 

A wish list for Fontlab new version

Post by Lawrence D'Olivei » Wed, 08 Nov 1995 04:00:00





(Lawrence D'Oliveiro) writes:



>   >I wouldn't even bother producing TT from
>   >FontLab, Fontographer or any other such program; what's the point of
>   >hinting TT with Type 1 hinting tools?

>   Why shouldn't that work? TrueType hinting is a superset of every other
>   hinting scheme on Earth...

>What nonsense.

>TrueType hinting is imperative, while Type 1 hinting is declarative.
>It's the difference between having to give detailed step by step
>instructions versus only writing down a number of rules or constraints.

I think you need to learn a little bit more about programming to gain a
better understanding of those terms you're using.

You can define those same rules and constraints in the TrueType version of
the font. The difference is, the font also carries the intelligence for
interpreting those rules, the Type 1 version doesn't.

If you think this makes the Type 1 approach superior, I direct your
attention to the interesting PostScript code in Appendix 3 of the Adobe
Type 1 Font Format book.

Quote:>TT hinting is lower level and more primitive than T1 hinting.
>And there is no automated way to translate from one to the other.

I don't see why there can't be an automated translation of Type 1 to
TrueType hinting, though I guess to get this completely correct, you'd
need to know exactly how Adobe's hinting algorithms work, and I believe
this is still not public knowledge. The reverse translation is not, in
general, possible.
 
 
 

1. T1 vs TT hinting (was: A wish list for FontLab

Aren't Roman font developers pretty particular about their diagonals?
Also, it's not clear to me that "complex curves" - if such things
exist - need to be hinted - or that TT hints would do any better.

I was just talking to a developer of very large character set
multilingual fonts - which they publish in both Type 1 and TrueType
format. He was praising how well the Type 1 rasterizer rendered
diagonals and stems of italic fonts, as opposed to the results obtained
with his TT fonts. He also mentioned that his TT development software
was one of the high-end models that does high-powered diagonal hinting
- which I would assume is better at what it does than the more mass-market
tools available. I admit to not having seen the evidence - but I have
seen similar results that would tend to back this up.

The point worth repeating is that the Type 1 rasterizer does a lot of
the work that the TT hints do - but the latter have to be embedded in
every font.

apparently,  a relatively popular font format in Asian countries.

It might seem reasonable to conclude that TT fonts are popular in Asia
because the format allows diagonal hints. However, if there is
a reason - I can assure you that it is not because of any advantage
of the format's hinting capabilities - rather - it's likely because
of other market parameters that don't have much to do with quality.

Terry O'Donnell
Adobe Developer Relations

2. Copy stream file to PCDOC in a folder

3. My Wish List

4. VisualSourceSafe File status

5. T1 vs TT hinting (was: A wish list for Font

6. Finding What Libraries are Currently Loaded in Memory

7. where can find FontLab software demo version

8. NT cannot run 32-bit applications

9. All New TTF new CD_ROM version include HK character and more

10. need to make a bold version of font using FontLab

11. - btlist01.txt (0/1) Bitstream Font List version 0.1 (34k)

12. - btlist01.txt (1/1) Bitstream Font List version 0.1 (34k)