Font hinting guides the adjustment of a scaled outline font to the target pixel grid before rasterization. In TrueType, instructions can control how outline points move at a particular size and resolution. Grid fitting can preserve important strokes when faithful geometric scaling would leave them awkwardly positioned between pixels.[ref]
For an idealized example, two equal-width vertical strokes can overlap different fractions of neighboring pixels after scaling. Their rasterized darkness can then differ despite equal geometric widths. Coordinating the adjusted stroke positions and widths can make their displayed weights more consistent. The target depends on the requested size: a correction suitable for a small glyph need not be appropriate when many more pixels resolve its outline.
Font hinting changes the geometry used for rendering, rather than the underlying Unicode text or its grapheme clusters. Glyph substitution, glyph positioning and font hinting solve different parts of the path from encoded text to a visible image.

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  1. Outline font
  2. Computer font
  3. Font
  4. Typography
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