Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jeremy Kolb <jkolb AT brandeis.edu>]

i thought i would pass this along, this is from the freetype2 2.1.3 faq thingy
at http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/2.1.3-explained.htm but i thought i'd
pass this on...

Short answer: No for most people !!

We now highly recommend you to not enable the TrueType bytecode interpreter when installing FreeType. That's because we believe that the FreeType auto-hinter now produces results that out-perform native TrueType hinting when it comes to rendering AA text.

However, you might still need it in certain cases, as the one described here:

• you're using TrueType fonts to render monochrome text.
  a very small number of popular TrueType fonts have very high-quality hints that allow them to generate extremely good-looking monochrome text at small character sizes. FreeType is not capable to match their quality with auto-hinting.

• you're using complex Asian TrueType fonts
  the current auto-hinter has been optimized for non-asian fonts and may, in certain cases, produce unpleasant results with CJK ideographs.

  Note also that a small number of asian fonts cannot be rendered properly without a bytecode interpreter. That's because they make "clever" use of certain features of the bytecode interpreter to "build" correct glyph outlines at runtime. FreeType cannot render these fonts correctly with auto-hinting, and will produce instead text that looks like garbage.

Again, we invite you to experiment with a fully anti-aliased desktop with FreeType 2.1.3 and no bytecode interpreter. Only if this doesn't suit your needs should you consider downgrading.

Jeremy