pledgies

a script for a pledgie video
----------------------------

The video presents

  ttfautohint

a new library based on FreeType's autohinting module.

  -> FreeType is a freely available library for rendering many font formats

The idea is to let a small routine automatically compute TrueType hints for
a given font.

  -> hints are a means to improve legibility for small sizes on the computer
     screen

Currently, the ttfautohint is in an early state which gives very promising
results, and which has received a warm welcome by the font designing
community (and even some quite enthusiastic reactions) but it could be made
much better and more user-friendly.

  -> screen shots and animations demonstrate the hinting process

The plan is to collect enough money so that I can work on it within the next
six months, providing the following goodies:

. the cake

    develop a standalone GUI which runs on all major platforms (Windows,
    MacOS, GNU/Linux)

    improve hinting for TrueType fonts which use OpenType features

    develop interfaces to various font editors so that ttfautohint can be
    smoothly integrated into their font development process

    add more knobs for better fine-tuning the hinting results

    better support for font families

. the icing

    support more scripts, most notably Arabic and CJK

    investigate hinting along the x-axis

      -> currently, only vertical hinting is implemented

. the cherry

    explore the possibility to emit higher-level TrueType hinting commands
    as used in hinting scripts provided by Visual TrueType or FontLab