Visual Hinting at a Glance

The application used to create a TrueType font produces glyph outlines, as well as a ‘glyf’ table of binary TrueType data. Hinting with Visual TrueType basically replaces that ‘glyf’ table with one produced by Visual TrueType. All this happens behind the scenes as you drag and drop hints on screen.

Visual TrueType includes Visual TrueType Talk (VTT), a program that produces source code from your on-screen hinting. Its own ‘glyf’ program turns that VTT source into TrueType source code. In turn, Visual TrueType converts that TrueType source code to TrueType binary data, which replaces the ‘glyf’ table that came with the font. Together, the new ‘glyf’ table from Visual TrueType and the glyph outline—as produced with the font program and possibly modified with Visual TrueType—result in a hinted TrueType font.

To simplify hinting, Visual TrueType displays glyph characteristics and hinting in distinctive ways so you can easily identify all parts of the glyph and all its hints. What you see depends on which commands are selected in the Visual TrueType menu (these same choices are available as check boxes in the dialog box for the Display Options command, which is on the Display menu). Selecting a Visual TrueType command or option displays the corresponding feature in the main window. See the “Configuring Main window display options” section for details on these options.