Dear list,

This is to start a discussion. If you want me to get to work on this
rather than just talking, i'll need guidance because i'm not expert of
these things.

A KDE application, like KWord or Okular, shows two kinds of text on screen:
1)  UI text  (e.g. menus)
2)  Document text  (the user's document, in WYSIWYG apps like KWord or
Okular. Not talking about Kate here!)

I'd like to make the case that font hinting should _never_ be used for
_document_ text. Yes, for _UI_ text it's a matter of taste and as such
it's perfectly fine. I'm saying that the configuration dialog in
System Settings should only affect UI text and not document text.

*** Screenshots ***

I just came across this blog post which suggests to me that I'm not alone:

http://slangkamp.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/kword-font-rendering/

This echoes my experience with PDF files in Okular (where the hinting
can't be disabled at all because of a current limitation in poppler),
see:

http://imagebin.ca/view/OhF1EPt.html

The same file in XPDF (which uses no hinting, imho looking much better):

http://imagebin.ca/view/i_nnpy.html

*** The arguments ***

Here are my arguments in favor of restricting hinting to UI text, and
never using it in document text.

Font hinting just doesn't work for document text, because:

* It ruins the accuracy of the on-screen representation of the
document, as it makes the font and the layout look different. So it
undermines WYSIWYG. Suddenly when you print the document it looks
different.

* It breaks the notion of zooming. Zooming should give the user that
he's still looking at the exact same thing, just closer. But hinting
makes that look like a wholly different font. First, this ruins the
user's confidence in the Zooming feature. Second, the user will often
feel constrained to set the zoom level so that the on-screen font
looks good / accurate.

* It often works very poorly as document text has more complex
layouting that seems to break the assumptions of the font hinting code
(see okular screenshot linked to above)

And before someone says, "but it's visually inconsistent to have
simultaneously hinted and non-hinted text on screen!", here's to
address this objection. UI text and Document text are two different
beasts and the user has a good intuition for that --- even the
non-savvy user. This is one part of standard GUI design that's been
gotten right long ago, and I've never seen even my mom mix up the two.

*** Summary ***

Hinting is a compromise, trading accuracy for crispness. Many users
appreciate it in GUI text, but document text is a different beast.

Cheers,
Benoit
 
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