I was doing some testing with improving the rendering quality of my fonts on low-res Windows machines. I noticed that a new, fresh export to WOFF – with no changes to the .glyphs file – looks far better on Windows than previous exports of the same .glyphs file.
I see that on the 3.0.4 changelog, “Glyphs now properly exports all flags in the glyf table” and that doing so can improve rendering in Chrome and Firefox. Is that what I’m seeing?
If so, that’s great news, because the new exports look much better. Just wanted to confirm because otherwise I have no explanation for the improvements. Also, does this have any application to OTF files, or is the glyf table only a property relevant to webfonts?
Top: old export (note the sunken tops of ‘i’)
Bottom: new export, no changes to source (‘i’ lines up correctly)
Followup: I was wrong and just made a mistake. The better-looking WOFF files are simply the result of exporting WOFF with PostScript/CFF toggled on. Choosing TrueType → WOFF results in the same shoddy appearance.
So, with that in mind, is there any downside to exporting WOFF/WOFF2 using the PostScript/CFF toggle? In the past, I’ve gone with TrueType (old habit from Glyphs 2, perhaps), but I’d rather use PostScript.
If it works in the environments you intend the font for, there is nothing to be said against CFF. CFF outlines perform worse in Windows environments, but that should not make a difference for this (non-complex) design.
TTFAutohint depends largely on your TTFAutohint settings.
CFF can work quite well in the later version of Windows (on most other platforms it don’t make a big difference). TrueType without proper hinting is usually much worse. But with some care, you can get much better results.
