My proposal to present ttfautohint with Eben Sorkin has been accepted, so I will be in Hong Kong in October!
Here is the proposal text:
Title: ttfautohint: libre autohinting for web fonts
Hinting TrueType fonts can be a slow and expensive process, but it is required by Windows XP, and many fonts lack good hinting totally because they are converted to TrueType from OpenType-CFF. FreeType is libre font rendering software used in many phones, tablets and other computers, that autohints TrueType fonts during its rendering process.
In 2010 Dave Crossland suggested the idea of building out FreeType’s rendering system into an autohinter to Werner Lemberg, the primary developer of FreeType. Werner made a prototype thanks to financial support from the Google Web Fonts team, and it produced results that received some warm attention from professional type designers.
Werner is now working full time on the project while seeking financial support from the wider typography community to continue this work. He has raised over $40,000, and supporters include Google Web Fonts, Extensis WebINK, FontLab, and many individual type designers.
This talk shows the quality of hinting that ttfautohint produces today and outlines the roadmap for the future. Eben Sorkin is a professional typeface designer, and he will present the integration of ttfautohint into his web font design process.
This little program is set to improve the quality of web typography!
Learn more at freetype.org/ttfautohint