Linotype Services

The manual hinting process offers a broad range of on-screen optimisation possibilities – the effect of optimisation efforts depends on the character and technical restriction of the individual typeface. The main goals of XSF optimisation are:

• Consistency of horizontal levels (x-height, cap-height) within a font and throughout a family. Proper appearance of overshoots.
  
• Consistency of stem widths for regular, bold and italic styles.
  
• Pixel-per-em (ppem) sizes for stem widths widen to two, three, four or five pixels.
  
• Correspondence between thickness of horizontal, vertical and diagonal systems at different ppems.
  
• Removal of blobs on curved areas, crossing strokes, junctions and diacritics.
  
• Horizontal position of diacritics
  
• Screen appearance of symmetrical and nearly symmetrical characters.
  
• Controlled letter spacing. Spacing with uneven number of pixels in side bearings.
  
• Hand tuning of individual shapes and local aesthetics.
  

The difference between an “un-hinted” or an “auto-hinted” TrueType font and an XSF Font can be very impressive. ‘Clear as a crystal’- letters and a sophisticated appearance of the original design even in very small point sizes are typical attributes.

Custom Screen Optimisation
Linotype has a library of XSF Fonts. In addition, notionally any font of the Linotype Library could be custom-engineered. Our basic TrueType or OpenType fonts can be customized with individual letters, self defined character sets or tuned to special applications (such as Microsoft® Word or Powerpoint). In every case, the original design is preserved to provide an maximum quality for on-screen appearance and traditional printing.

To reduce complexity, Linotype offers four standard quality levels for on-screen opti­mization of fonts – depending on the customer needs. For further information or a quote, please contact us.