In general, the more detailed hinting you do to a font, the better the quality of the font. Some outline editors automatically hint a font for you. Although auto-hinting sometimes is better than none at all, Visual TrueType offers more sophisticated controls for those people interested in crafting high-quality fonts that will display and print reliably on all devices. For this reason, Visual TrueType can strip all auto-hinting from your font so you add more and better hints. For details, see “Preparing the Open Font” in Chapter 3, “Using Visual TrueType: The Basics.”
You hint all glyphs in a font, one glyph at a time. Hints applied to a glyph apply to all sizes of that glyph. Consequently, you need to visually inspect a range of sizes, both smaller and larger, to verify that the hinting makes all sizes look good.
When hinting, staying true to the outline becomes less important than producing a clear bitmap at smaller point sizes, particularly on low-resolution output devices. Your main concerns are choosing key features to maintain in the glyphs and ensuring that features similar or identical on different glyphs remain so at different sizes. You should try to:
· Maintain consistent heights (cap height, x-height, ascenders, descenders, and so on).
· Keep stroke weights consistent.
· Prevent rounding variations that would cause inappropriate differences at small point sizes (for example, rounding one stroke to two pixels while rounding a similar stroke to one pixel).
· Create even “stepping” patterns and consistent widths for diagonal strokes.
· Keep counters open at small sizes.
· Control side bearings so glyphs don’t touch.