So if your font is only ever used on Macs or iPhones, do not bother to do hinting. On Apple devices, TT hinting is not used at all. ![]() So if you are catering to Android devices, you may get away with shipping an unhinted font. However, Android does some on-the-fly optimisation even when the font is unhinted. TT hinting may also make a difference on Android devices. Why would we want to do that with TT hints? In short: if the font is intended for use on Windows. Let’s assume for a moment that our font’s crispness and legibility might profit from distorting its outlines. Unhinted fonts will make more use of antialiasing, which better preserves shapes, but is too fuzzy to read at very low resolutions. Display fonts, script fonts, complex outlines, icon fonts have no need for hinting. If, for the font in question, preservation of letter shapes is more important than legibility, do not hint. In other words, only hint your font if it makes sense to keep it legible at very low pixel sizes. ![]() The point is to maintain legibility with a sharper, crisper pixel image-at the expense of shape fidelity. On the contrary, hints will stretch, squish and squeeze them onto the pixels of any given low resolution font size. ![]() Hints are not there to preserve your shapes. Before we go into hinting, or ‘instructioning’, as TrueType (TT) hinting is often referred to, let me repeat my hinting mantra: hinting is a technology that distorts your outlines so they better fit on the pixel grid.
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