Bitstream and Lycoris: Taking Linux fonts to the desktop (Part 2)

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(Jun. 15, 2004)

Q: You talked about 'hinting' and 'anti-aliasing'. What does 'hinting' mean?

Sampo: Bitstream wants to fill the last remaining gap in font display capabilities for Linux. The low quality of fonts has been a problem facing Linux users for years. Native hinting and anti-aliasing, which btX2 support, go a long way toward providing high-quality output on display screens.

Native hinting retains the distinguishing features of characters -- what makes an 'A' an 'A,' a 'B' a 'B,' and so on. Native hints are built into TrueType fonts.

Hints are instructions for building the outline of each character in a font. They're programmed right into the font, and they make sure that important features of characters aren't lost at small point sizes and low resolutions.

Hints are instructions for building the outline of each character in a font, for example the 'W' at 12 point. Hints ensure that distinguishing features of characters are retained at small point sizes on low-resolution devices, such as computer screens and LCD displays.

Above, the top line of each point size is not hinted. The second line is the clean, hinted version. The result is fine-tuned text that is easier to read.

Anna: Sampo Kaasila was instrumental in developing TrueType while at Apple, including native hints. Bitstream has the commercial rights to license native TrueType hinting directly from Apple, and can sublicense these rights to developers.

btX2 comes with a core set of 13 delta-hinted screen fonts, which include 1 symbol, 4 serif, 4 sans serif, and 4 monospaced fonts. Lycoris has licensed these core set of fonts along with btX2.

Q: And 'anti-aliasing'?

Sampo: This smoothing of characters removes jaggies, also known as a staircase effect. Anti-aliasing makes the characters look better on the screen.

For the best possible output of TrueType fonts on a computer screen, you can apply both hinting and anti-aliasing.

hinted and not anti-aliased (left), hinted and anti-aliased (right)

Q: So what does this all mean for Lycoris customers?

Joseph: People want their desktop to look good, and to have the ability to customize their computing environments. Bitstream has brought great font rendering to Linux. Using Bitstream's fonts and technology in Desktop/LX and across the entire Lycoris platform makes sense for our users.

Q: What is next? How will Bitstream and Lycoris work together in the future?

Anna: Worldwide font support will be critical. For Europe, we have a collection of WGL4 fonts. As I mentioned earlier, each WGL4 font includes 652 characters and supports six different 'scripts' or character sets: Baltic, Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, and Western. Asian font support is also important. As Sampo mentioned, btX2 supports a very compact stroke-based font format. With stroke-based fonts, you can scale characters to any size and use one font for all your weights, from light to bold.

Joseph: Bitstream's selection of international fonts gives us a scalable, portable solution. Lycoris and Bitstream can bring a great Linux solution anywhere in the world. Especially exciting is Bitstream's stroke-based CJK font, which contains glyphs for all Asian languages in one compact font.

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Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Except where otherwise specified, the contents of this site are copyright © 1999-2008 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise is prohibited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.