Xref: utzoo comp.lang.postscript:5662 comp.sys.mac.system:955
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!island!grenada!roger
From: roger@grenada.UUCP (Roger Corman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: PostScript vs TrueType?
Message-ID: <862@grenada.UUCP>
Date: 1 Aug 90 00:01:27 GMT
References: <1100.26af57d3@waikato.ac.nz> <1990Jul26.135834.9874@tsa.co.uk>
Reply-To: roger@grenada.uu.net (Roger Corman)
Organization: Island Graphics, Santa Rosa, California
Lines: 39

According to Adobe, low level hinting (hinting code in the fonts) was tried
early in the company's history.  They abandoned it and chose high-level
hinting (hinting code in the rendering engine) for two main reasons.

The first was that the amount of time and expense required to create each 
font was great--it wad have taken an unacceptable amount of time to develop 
a decent library of fonts.  The code in each font had to be modified 
and debugged.  Their experiences lead one to suspect that it will take
awhile for a large number of TrueType fonts to become available.  True,
it is probably easy to convert other font outline formats to this format,
but not so easy to create *quality* fonts with low level hinting.

The second reason had to do with the future of the font technology.  In
order to get better rendering results, the low-level hinting
method probably would require upgrading the fonts themselves (where the
rendering hints are).  With Adobe's approach, improved rendering
engines can get better results with the same old font libraries.  Printers
being mechanical, and tied to microprocessor technology, are likely to
be upgraded every few years, with newer and better rendering engines.  
Customers expect this.  Customers don't expect to have to buy new fonts.
The high-level hinting approach appears to give Adobe fonts more long term
value.

I ought to add what I consider another reason that high-level hinting is
good for Adobe.  Now that Adobe has, under market pressure, opened up their
font formats such that the information in them can be readily understood,
the key rendering technology is still in a black box (PostScript and ATM
rendering engines).

Which type of hinting is better for you and me?  Whichever allows us
the most fonts of the best quality for the lowest price (obviously).  I
personally expect it will be *years* (if ever) before the number of quality
fonts now available in Adobe format are available in TrueType format.

Roger Corman
Island Graphics
Santa Rosa, CA
(707)523-4465
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