What is the best approach for hinting an outline style?
Ideally I’d like to apply all outlines at export via the offset curve filter but don’t know how this could be hinted.
Hoping to avoid making a separate Glyphs file with expanded paths and manual hinting.
Any thoughts much appreciated.
You can run the auto hinting on export.
Do not hint this design.
I had tried auto hint on export but with no luck. But found that scaling with a transformation filter was causing the problem. Removed the transformation filter and worked like a charm! Thank you!
For reference, this is what I was getting when transformation filter was active:
I don’t need the transform. So all good now.
I noted in your Creating fonts with complex outlines article the advice to consider not hinting non-normal outlines including inlines and outlines. I guess I see other outline fonts seem to be hinted (like Helvetica Outline in my example) and the thinnest hairline styles of most fonts I’m looking at seem to be hinted.
So I’m a bit torn on the best thing to do here.
If a hairline style should be hinted wouldn’t it be logical to also hint an outline style? In the spirit of giving the style the best possible chance of holding up in the event of (non-advised) smaller-scale use?
As always, you need to test. Try both approaches in as many environments as you can.
The regular hairline I would consider hinting as well.
Hinting is supposed to help maintain legibility at low resolutions at the expense of shape fidelity. It distorts your shapes so they better fit on the pixel grid, for a sharper image and more consistent stems and shapes heights.
What will likely happen with the double stroked o is that the inner shape will be distorted differently than the outer shape. You will lose shape fidelity without a gain in legibility.
Better to keep shape fidelity and not use hinting in this case. The renderer will use more antialiasing.
For PS hinting it suffices to test in an Adobe app, for TT hinting in MS Word.
Thanks for clarifying that. Makes a lot of sense. Appreciate the help from you both.
