Re: [ft-devel] Possible solution for TrueType patent problems...

[Werner LEMBERG]

> The idea: From size 15 ALL fonts are drawn in a really satisfactory
> manner as antialiasing has to and can be used at those sizes.  The
> problem is only with smaller sizes - glyphs are not clear enough or
> wobbly.  Let´s put together TrueType fonts and bitmap fonts (of
> varying glyph widths).  Let´s hint ourselves.  WE do not need
> Apple´s algorithms.  We have our eyes.  WE know when it´s good and
> when it´s not.  I´m talking about a maximum of 2000 hours for a
> reasonable number of fonts.  On the shoulders of a few people this
> time can easily be provided by the OS community.

You are greatly underestimating the time involved in developing good
fonts.  Just ask, say, the creator of the excellent Gentium family how
many hours he has invested.  Additionally, your point of view is very
eurocentric IMHO -- fonts covering the big CJK character sets need
*much* more time.

> This idea then has to be integrated into FreeType.  If there´s an
> additional bitmap file existing, FreeType ignores any hinting and
> antialiasing for the special file (if constraints are as so, of
> cause) and takes the data out of the bitmap file.  This is
> transparent to all applications and solves the problem.

First of all, only a *small fraction* of instructions is affected by
the Apple patents.  Secondly, FreeType can circumvent the patents,
with quite satisfactory results.  With other words, switching off the
bytecode interpreter completely is silly.

Meanwhile, FreeType's autohinter produces excellent results for many
fonts, regardless of hints.  Instead of reinventing the wheel (this
is, creating a bunch of bitmap fonts which still won't cover all
cases), it's much better to invest free time in improving the
autohinter, for example, by testing fonts for artifacts so that the
hinting algorithm can be fine-tuned further.

BTW, there is a much simpler solution than yours which I've suggested
a few years ago (without any enthusiastic reaction): Use the patented
bytecode interpreter to render all glyphs of a font, then do the same
with the unpatented bytecode interpreter.  Get the difference of the
images for a great number of font sizes and store them in a compressed
format.  Such differences are probably just a few pixels per glyph (if
at all), yielding a very compact representation.  Additionally, this
process can be automated.

> Imagine: I just wanted to change sides to Linux myself and wanted to
> convince my customers to do so, too - I have no chance to do so:
> Linux is ugly since years and it doesn´t manage to overcome it
> because of it´s ugly fonts.  And NO: My customers won´t buy licences
> from Apple and most OS friends won´t do either...

You are beating the wrong dog: It's not FreeType but the structures
one top of it which give bad rendering results.


    Werner