User Guide

FontLab 4
578
Hinting Symmetrical Characters
There are two types of symmetrical characters: round characters (like ‘O’)
and “pike” characters (like ‘V’).
Round characters are “automatically symmetrical” in both directions. So
it’s enough to set the positions and width of the vertical and horizontal
“stems” and the center points will be interpolated and automatically set in
the central position:
For “pike” characters this is not good enough because the position of the
pike point is important. At most PPMs you must set the width of the pike to
one pixel. Automatic interpolation of the outline may set the pike point to a
position where the pike will disappear.
So in the case of pike characters we have to begin by positioning the pike
point with the align to pixel center command and then set the positions
of all other points by linking to this point: