[ltp] font rendering

[Christoph Singer]

On 03.07.2004 16:05, Hartwig, Thomas wrote:
> Hello Christoph,
> 
> I can't believe it. It is working like charme. *echt beeindruckend*
> I will write a detailed report of this later if I investigated what is 
> Freetype.org saying about this. I simply can't imagine that someone says 
> you don't need the bytecoder interpreter.

There are 2 reasons for this:
1. Because of the patents held by Apple, Freetype cannot recommend 
people to use the bytecode interpreter.
2. The bytecode interpreter produces good results only if there are good 
instructions in the font. For poorly instructed fonts, the Freetype 
Autohinter combined with antialiasing produces better results. In short:
High quality font -> use bytecode interpreter
low quality font -> use autohinter + antialiasing

Unfortunately, instructing a TrueType font is not a trivial task. People 
with the required skills are highly paid specialists, and it needs a lot 
of time.
That's why the only well-instructed fonts that are available at no cost 
are the "Web Core Fonts" provided by Microsoft. (Times New Roman, Arial, 
  Verdana, Courier New, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Andale Mono; none-free 
but nevertheless widely used are other fonts that ship with MS products: 
Tahoma, Palatino Linotype, etc.).
All other free TTFs that are typically used in Linux systems (Luxi, 
Vera, the fonts from the freefont project etc.) are only poorly 
instructed, and the only way to make them at least readable is to use 
the Freetype autohinter and antialiasing.

That's why my .fonts.conf disables antialiasing only for Microsoft fonts.

> Following your detailed description (good work), the fonts are looking 
> 100% in the way like windows. I'm afraid I'm voiding patent issues now?!
> What are the backgrounds of your knowledge about this? Is this a fraud now?

I'm not sure whether Apple's TrueType patents are valid in Germany.

Christoph