[ft] New ttfautohint release soon

[Werner LEMBERG]

Folks,


I'm going to make a new release of ttfautohint in two days, if
everything's working fine.

The perhaps most important feature is the addition of a `control
instructions file' to modify and adjust hints at a very low level.

The first attached image shows glyphs `O' and `Q' (from font `Halant
Regular') at 12px, using only ttfautohint's `-w gGD' parameter to
force strong stem width and positioning.  The hinting of glyph `Q' is
really bad, making the glyph vertically two pixels larger!  Reason is
that this glyph doesn't contain a horizontal segment at the baseline
blue zone (y = 1; this corresponds to the segment 13-14 in the `O'
glyph).  Normally, segment 1-2 would form a `stem' with the baseline
segment (as segment 7-8 does in glyph `O').  Instead, it forms a stem
with segment 19-20, which gets moved down (y = -1) because the whole
glyph appears to be stretched.

The second attached image shows the same two glyphs, this time putting
the line `Q l 38 (-70,20)' into a separate control instructions file
(`add a segment with direction left at point 38 of glyph Q, starting
70 font units left of point 38 and ending 20 font units right of point
38').  Segment 1-2 now properly forms a stem with our artificial
segment at point 38, and the 'O'-like shape is properly positioned.

A consequence of the above is that you no longer need to add auxiliary
points to a glyph so that ttfautohint's hinting algorithm forms
segments...

If you are capable to build from the git repository, please check
whether everything compiles and runs!


    Werner