Hi,
Yesterday's opentype font meeting touched upon hinting and ttfautohint briefly. I see the infinality patch is already gone (next release, 2.13.2 I guess - bits of it was removed in 2.13.1 already). Question is, does its removal impact the functionality of ttfautohint? Are we getting into a situation where ttfautohint is hinting for the (limited) "good enough" light hinting model of recent freetype? And dropping support, and/or compatibility/ awareness of intended usages of outcome in other *cough* microsoft *cough* hinting models?
FWIW, fontval will carry the reverse diff. "Good enough" hinting isn't good enough - some people just want familarity, so nothing except Microsoft releasing a (binary-only) backend is good enough :-(. Unless/until that happens, variety (even if it is "poorer", for a value of "poorer") is important.