User Guide

This is useful for finding mismatches between the same
character in different fonts. You will have to figure out the
best technique for getting the points to match on a
character–by–character basis. Sometimes it is better to
remove extra points from a character with too many points,
and sometimes it is better to add points to a character with
too few. Just remember how the points get matched up, and
let that guide you as to where to insert or delete points.
Font hinting
Only about two percent of our Fontographer customers
need to concern themselves with hinting. This statement is
not meant to demean the other ninety-eight percent;
Fontographer’s autohinting abilities are quite good, and
should serve most cases well. Think of it like this: most
people fly on commercial airplanes. They get around
without any problems, and are usually happy with their
flights. Very few of the people who take airplane rides need
to know all the physics controlling airplane lift and related
phenomena. Some people might want to know: they could
be curious, or be interested in piloting their own airplane.
The point is, however, that in some cases it isn’t necessary
to become an expert in all the details.
Hints are just like that. Fontographer’s autohints will take
you where you want to go; only those few who want to be
pilots really need to manually edit them. So don’t feel you
need to read this section and master these concepts, or that
you should go into the Hints layer and start changing things
around. Feel free to check it all out, but be assured that you
absolutely do not have to know a thing about hinting in order
to successfully use Fontographer.
Are you still with us?
We highly recommend that you obtain and read Adobe’s
Type One Font Specification before getting too involved
in hint editing. Although that publication deals entirely with
PostScript Type 1, the concepts covered will be valuable
Fontographer User's Manual
10: Expert Advice Page #12