User Guide

new hints yet. It is waiting for the outline to be edited first.
Once an outline has been edited, new hints may be
calculated to match the new outline. When you open an
existing TrueType font, Fontographer can not read in the
hints, which are compiled into the font. Fontographer will
automatically turn autohinting on.
You can tell if Fontographer is on automatic by looking in
the Hints menu. There is an item called Autohint; if there is
a check mark next to it, that means Fontographer will
recalculate hints for the selected character every time the
outline gets edited. If you don’t want that, choose Autohint
from the menu. The check mark will go away, and
autohinting will be turned off for that character. Be careful,
because if you then turn Autohint back on by reselecting it
from the menu, Fontographer will re-calculate new hints for
that character.
When autohinting is on, you can watch Fontographer come
up with new hints as you edit a character. Just make the
Hints layer visible, check to see that Autohint is on, and edit
the character outline. You will see the hints adjust,
disappear, move, and change, depending upon what you do
with the outline. This is a good way to get a feeling for how
Fontographer finds hints.
Editing hints in the Outline Window
You must make the Hints layer active before you can edit
hints. You do this by clicking on the Hints’ layer name in
the Layers palette.
You can select hints with the mouse, just like you select
points. Selected hints have a hollow looking arrowhead:
You can select more than one hint by dragging a marquee
around a group of hints, or by using the standard Shift-
select method.
You can reorder hints by dragging them around (this is
useful in the case of overlapping hints: PostScript fonts will
get the hint that appears closest to the character outline in
the case of overlap). Hints may also be reordered from the
Fontographer User's Manual
10: Expert Advice Page #18