[MPlayer-dev-eng] Font hinting in libass

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

Hi Uoti Urpala!

 On 2007.04.19 at 00:09:27 +0300, Uoti Urpala wrote next:

> I think there should be a way to disable native hinting, but I'm not
> sure whether it should be an option (including all the flags above?) or
> if some other mode would be suitable as a default.

Well, at least it should be tested separately on freetype compiled with
native hinting and without one. I suspect that most people don't care
about fonts and use freetype without bytecode interpreter, since
regular hinting together with urw-fonts or dejavu-fonts, "out of the
box" setup for most distributions produces more or less satisfying
results. Still, people who have recompiled freetype with BCI enabled
probably care more about fonts quality and will likely to see problem
with subtitle fonts.

Anyway, if I understand your problem right, you mean that "native
hinting" method (BCI) produces bad results on embedded fonts, while
producing nice results on the same fonts when they aren't embedded and
different load method is used? This sounds more like freetype (or maybe
libass) bug, and solving it by turning native hinting off seem to be
unreasonable.

If you found some embedded font which always renders worse with BCI
enabled (no matter if embedded or not), it sounds like freetype bug
too.. freetype simply has problems with rendering some fonts.

Can you provide link to subtitles or video with embedded font? I'd like
to see that kind of bug.

-- 

Vladimir