[ft-devel] Re: [freetype-autohint] Bitstream Vera and tilde

[August Karlstrom]

Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> [Please use freetype-devel for further communication; we have moved
> FreeType to savannah.nongnu.org.]
>
>
> > I use Ubuntu Linux 5.04 where Bitstream Vera is the default system
> > font.  I get the best font rendering results with autohinting
> > enabled (sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig).  The problem is that
> > with autohinting, the tilde symbol (~) in 8 pt is displayed as a
> > dash (-).  As far as I know all other characters are displayed
> > correctly.  Is there a way to fix this?
>
>
> Is it?  I can't see that with ftview, neither at 72dpi nor 96dpi.

Sorry, actually it's not Bitstream Vera. The default fonts I'm talking 
about are named Sans, Serif and Monospace (don't know if they have 
"real" names). I'm using a screen resolution of 800x600 and 96 dpi.

> Anyway, I don't think that this is easy to handle.  Main reason is
> that Vera has a lot of TrueType instructions which changes the shape
> depending on the size.  For small sizes, it exaggerates the vertical
> extent of the tilde so that the rasterizer actually displays a tilde.
> The autohinter can't do that.

That's a great shame since (at least on my monitor) the autohinter 
clearly gives the best result.


August