Screenshots to compare ttfautohint output against standard manual Truetype hinting on Microsoft Windows DirectWrite rasterisation. Firefox5.0 browser for Windows7 is used here.

Screenshots are taken from fonts rendered with DirectWrite-Cleartype and with DirectWrite grayscale.

Click on the preview to see the full scale screenshot, and make sure you are veiwing the screenshot at 100% dimensions [...]

Werner Lemberg has made some improvements to his ttfautohint library.

These are revised screenshots to compare the autohinter output to standard manual hinting on Microsoft Windows GDI rasterisation.

The first section of screenshots are taken from fonts rendered with GDI-Cleartype. The second section of shots are from fonts rendered with GDI-greyscale.

Click on the preview [...]

(above) WinXP – Ubuntu Font – Standard Manual Hinting

(above) WinXP – Ubuntu Font – ttfauto hinting

(above) Windows7 – Ubuntu Font – Standard hinting

(above) Windows7 – Ubuntu Font – ttfauto hinting

(above) Windows7 – Droid Serif Font – Standard hinting

(above) Windows7 [...]

(above) Standard manual hinted Ubuntu Font

(Below) ttfautohint hinted Ubuntu font

Note that the curves stems on the y-axis appear more ragged than in the manually hinted font. A close up (400%) shows the following;

(above) Standard manual hinted at 400% magnification.

(Below) ttfautohint hinted at 400% magnification.

[...]

The following screenshots are from first tests with Werner Lemberg’s ‘ttfautohint’, a developmental library for autohinting truetype fonts for screen rendering on legacy Windows OS’s. Ttfautohint strips a truetype font of any truetype instruction tables present in the font, then re-hints the font, building new truetype instructions. Ubuntu Font was used for these initial tests [...]