Font Hinting
Most text rendering engines rely heavily on hinting to determine exactly
which areas of a glyph should be smoothed. Font hinting, or instructing,
uses tables of mathematical instructions to align letterforms to the pixel
grid and to determine which pixels should be gray scaled. Though most
software provides auto-hinting using standardized algorithms, ideally the
process would be done manually by the type designer and embedded in
the file.
Put simply, these instructions work by modifying the position of structurally
important points, such as those found along splines or at the base of stems,
and aligning them at pixel boundaries. Intermediate points are then
repositioned based on their relationship to the primary points. Using an
open-source font editor, such as FontForge, allows you to view and edit a
font՚s hinting information. See how much work goes into producing a clear
glyph; your appreciation of type designers and font engineers will certainly
increase.