For expert TrueType hinting
You've probably noticed how certain fonts - notably the standard Windows fonts, Times New Roman and Arial - are readable at much smaller sizes on screen than most others. Ever wondered why?
In the development of such fonts, after the outlines have been finalized, many little programs (known as TrueType hinting instructions) are embedded in each font. Each program (there's one per character in the font), controls the key aesthetic features of one character, as it is displayed at various tricky small sizes - preserving those aspects crucial to legibility and beneficial to aesthetics.
Delta hinting: achieving the quality of hand-tuned bitmaps
Although a well-written TrueType program controls typographic features over a wide range of sizes, there's almost always some extra quality that can be squeezed out of the font. A TrueType engineer checks each size of each character rendered by the rasterizer, adding "delta instructions" at specific sizes. In this way, the ideal character images are set for many sizes of the font.
Hinting for grey
In Windows 95 and NT, a font developer can switch on anti-aliasing at some or all sizes. Let us know if your main targets will be "grey-aware" - if so, hinting can be specially written to take best advantage of the grey renderer. All sizes can be improved with grey, although most fonts - even system fonts - don't yet take full advantage of the fact.
In Windows 98 there is yet more control: one can specify very different behaviour on grey-aware and monochrome systems.
FREE TRIAL!
If you convince us you're serious about getting a font hinted, email the font to us and we'll hint a few characters free of charge for you to see the difference for yourself.
Further information
For any enquiries about our TrueType hinting services, please get in touch via the Contact page.
Learning about hinting
Read more about hinting on the TrueType hinting area of the TrueType Typography site. Many links to other sites.
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