Script font joins are jagged after export

[cmizen]

I have created a monoline script font in glyphs, and spent a long time ensuring the kerning is correct so that each and every glyph joins up to each other perfectly. This always displays correctly when in Glyphs.

However, now that I have exported it and have been testing it in Illustrator (CC 2104 on Mac OSX) at certain zoom levels the joins don’t display correctly, and are slightly off/jagged. I’ve attached two images of the same piece of text below. On the zoomed out shot you can see that there are problems between the ‘ext’ glyphs. If you check the zoomed in screenshot you can see that they are all lined up perfectly. This is the exact same piece of text.

Am I right in thinking that I can fix this with hinting? I haven’t done any manual hinting on the font, but I had autohinting turned on when I exported it. I’ve looked quickly at the hinting guides on the homepage, would following the guides to set vertical hints on the edges help?

Thanks in advance!

[mekkablue (Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer)]

@cmizen

On the zoomed out shot you can see that there are problems between the ‘ext’ glyphs. If you check the zoomed in screenshot you can see that they are all lined up perfectly. This is the exact same piece of text.

Adobe apps apply different rendering modes at different zoom levels. That is what they do.

@cmizen

Am I right in thinking that I can fix this with hinting?

The opposite, actually. No hinting at all, not even autohinting. That will suppress pixel snapping, but that will also make your font look fuzzier. Try it and see which of the two is the lesser evil for you.

[GeorgSeifert]

The problem you have is that the autohinter adds hints to you in/out strokes. That moves them quite a lot on small sizes. With manual hints you can add hints only on places to the important stems.