[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#962478: Bug#962478: fonts-firacode: Provide TTF instead of OTF font files. The former embed hinting instructions and thus are rendered sharper on (low-res) screens.

[Paul Wise]

On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 3:03 PM Salim B wrote:

> The FiraCode author explicitly states[1]:
>
> > I think at some point OTF was superior to TTF, but now they are mostly the same. The difference between OTF and TTF is that TTF can embed hinting instructions, which are essential for rendering on low-res displays.
>
> Therefore I think it would *really* make sense to switch to the TTF variant of the font since it's mainly intended for "on-screen" usage anyway (in contrast to print) and thus sharp rendering is very important.

Pango/HarfBuzz is dropping support for low-res displays and hinting so
I'm not sure how useful this is.

https://lwn.net/Articles/821016/
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz-Hinting-Woe
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/issues/463
https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/2394

-- 
bye,
pabs

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