Hint
| Without hinting | With hinting | |
|---|---|---|
| Without antialiasing |
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| With antialiasing |
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Subpixel rendering |
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Hinting is a process in which instructions ( English hints ) in vector font to the display quality of text to be embedded Helv, screens to improve low resolution. Hints ensure that the outlines of the characters are precisely aligned with the pixel edges during display, which results in a uniform and clean display. It is accepted that the shape of the characters, the line thickness and the spacing between the characters are changed, so that the typical appearance of a font can be lost and different fonts can look very similar with a very small font size, even if they are larger Font sizes differ significantly from one another.
Creating hints is a very complex process that is carried out manually to achieve the best display quality. Many free or cheaper fonts have no hinting or only an automatic hinting created by font tools.
In addition to hinting, antialiasing (with or without subpixel rendering ) is another method to improve the display of fonts. The shape of the characters is retained, but the writing appears blurred. Since Windows Vista and Mac OS X , a combination of hinting with antialiasing and subpixel rendering ( called ClearType under Windows ) has been activated by default in most operating systems in order to achieve the best possible display quality.
Web links
- Optimization of fonts through special hinting - XSF (Linotype.com)
- Optimization of fonts through special hinting - ESQ (fonts.com, engl.)