Bug 9975

Summary: Broken outline for ampersand when using hinting at tiny size
Product: DejaVu Reporter: Øyvind Kolås <pippin>
Component: SansAssignee: Deja Vu bugs <dejavu-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: x86 (IA32)   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:
Attachments: The string renderings at the bottom of this image shows the artifact encountered.

Description Øyvind Kolås 2007-02-14 14:32:53 UTC 
The ampersands outline is broken (it extends far beyond the bounding box of the glyph) when rendered using freetype 2.2.1 with full bytecode interpreter enabled.

ftstring -m 'foo &' 1 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf

Shows the issue on at least two different systems.
Comment 1 Øyvind Kolås 2007-02-14 14:36:20 UTC 
Created attachment 8709 [details]
The string renderings at the bottom of this image shows the artifact encountered.
Comment 2 Ben Laenen 2007-02-18 14:22:16 UTC 
Hinting shouldn't exactly be used at those tiny sizes, since it doesn't make sense anymore when only 1 or 2 pixels are available. In Windows for example I've seen the hinting just being turned off if you show glyphs at those tiny sizes. It should be possible to setup fontconfig/freetype as well to get that effect if you insist on displaying fonts at size 1ppem.

Next to the fact that hinting at that size is useless, it's also technically almost impossible to adjust hinting for that size. Hinting instructions start acting very weird at those sizes, as they aren't meant for it (I doubt ampersand is the only glyph with problems at size 1ppem...). Hence I'd say that any effort in trying to modify the shape at that size is better put in hinting new glyphs.

Marking as wontfix.

Greetings
Ben

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