Hi LRN,

"Obviously, this is going nowhere."
   That isn't the way I see it.  Looking back on our previous discussions, we had done some experiments and discussed a lot of possibilites.  I also increased the sizes of the  marks.  I think it's pretty clear that it's a hinting issue, but I don't know what to do about it at this time. I don't let that get me down though.

"You've mentioned on https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?108527 that this bug should be closed."

   As near as I can tell, LRN, I said no such thing in report 108527: you did.

"If you can't do anything to fix it, then i guess we should let it go (what's the status for "Can't fix"?)... "

    The status for "impossible to fix" would be "Won't fix"
    I do not know there is nothing we can do to fix the problem.
    The status for "don't know how to fix" is "open".

I marked it "Done" at one time, because some changes to the shapes of marks seems to help on my end.  But this didn't seem to resolve the problem you were talking about.  I'll now change that to "Need Info".

Or I could "close" it.  Usual policy here is to close bugs that have been verified fixed, when a release comes out.  But I could make an exception, if you insist -- although I can't imagine how that would improve anything...

cont'd off-line

Hi LRN

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 6:09 PM, LRN <INVALID.NOREPLY@gnu.org> wrote:

> Follow-up Comment #12, sr #108057 (project freefont):
>
> Well, for my particular display (and maybe not just display, OS could be
> affecting this somehow as well) when font is set to 14px, resulting absolute
> font size is close to what i get from 11pt.
>
> So there isn't any misunderstanding. Basically, your comparison screenshot
> compares apples (text size at 8-14px) with oranges (text size at 8-15pt).

ent me apples and oranges.  I thought you were inviting me to compare them.

I acknowledge that the images
freemono_freeserif_r2350_nightly_px-fonttest.png
freemono_freeserif_r2350_nightly.png
look the same, and that the backtick becomes indistinct as such below 11 pt.

Furthermore, I've tried it now in Windows 7, under Explorer, and see something like your images.

It's weird.  The characters are bigger than in Linux, but the grave is like a single pxel...

This is a hinting issue.  Windows uses hints, while Linux uses more advanced technology.  And...Now that I look, Fontforge doesn't hint that accent at all.

So it's a combination of Fontforge deciding not to hint the glyph, and Windows giving up.

Not sure what to do about that.  I'll think about it.

> To
> illustrate this - here's a screenshot of my original fonttest (with font size
> in px). If you compare it with
> https://savannah.gnu.org/support/download.php?file_id=25840 , you'll see that
> backtick goes horizontal for size < 14px (on my display). Which is exactly the
> same as it was before.
>

Nonetheless, the new grave accent is subtantially longer and denser in the more recent FreeMono, and it does in fact make a difference at certain point sizes.

> Slight differences in spacing could be attributed to changed browser version
> (it's Nighly, i update often).
>
> I think it's safe to assume that font rendering on W32 is really weird, and
> that it somehow makes back-tick come out bad.
> Luckily, i now have a W32 laptop that i can freely reboot. Which means that i
> am able to rapidly test lots of fonts (my opinion is that Windows is incapable
> of updating existing font without rebooting, and my desktop reboots roughly
> once a month). So if you would kindly make a number of freemono fonts with
> different back-ticks (narrow, normal, bold, very bold, super-bold, slightly
> tilted, tilted, sharply tilted, almost vertical; also, i've seen the source
> file and back-tick seems to be symmetric - try making it asymmetric in one
> dimension (like single quote, for example - narrower on one end, wider on
> another)),

I spent about 4 hours making the changes I submitted.
I think I did a good job, and I thank you for raising the question.
But I think you underestimate how much you're asking here.

I am very particular about how the font should work, as I explained.  Specifically, that the "grave" glyph should be the same as the grave accents on several dozen other letters, and that a change in one style is reflected in all 4 styles, and that it should match the acute accent etc etc etc.  This gets quite tricky in places.

You must have a copy of fontforge.  It's not that hard to use.  I'm willing to help you with any questions you might have.

> i'd see how they render, and maybe we'll finally find some
> correlation between back-tick shape and its rendering.
>

This is no surprise to me.  I struggle with this every time I test in Windows. 
I have to do terrible things (after deleting, and rebooting, I go in with DOS and remove the invisible leftover fonts, because, I tell you, sometimes it decides to use the invisible leftovers rather than the newly-installed ones.)

Of course, Linux is almost as bad.  Difference is, I think I understand how Linux works, while I suspect nobody understand how Windows works.

> Yet another possibility is that i'm a moron and was either building the fonts
> in a wrong way (`svn update && make ttf') or packing the wrong files (`cd sfd;
> tar -c *.ttf  | xz -z > ../freefont-rREVISIONNUMBER.tar.xz') for sending them
> to my W32 PC.
>

A) Nobody here thinks you're a moron (even if my frustration may leak through sometimes, I am well aware of my own limitations, and that people are different, and that it's a good thing.)
I regard (non-abusive) bug reporters as gold.  (Abusive ones are silver.)

I sometimes look at things differently one day than the next.  (As you witnessed.)

B) The "make" steps are right.  What version of FontForge are you using?  I could also build you snapshots.  But I doubt this is the problem.

C) I think the "px" measures are nearly useless. On modern systems, there are multiple layers of meaning to this measure.  I'm not sure what you will see.  (With "pt" at least there are only a couple of layers, but I kind of understand them.)

Cheers, again!

Hi LRN!

First, px is not "smaller than pt". Px means "pixels" a measure relative to the resolution of the device.  The absolute size of a pixel depends on the resolution of the device.  In contrast, a pt is 1/72 inch, which is an absolute measure.

This is part of the misunderstanding here, I think.

As to the visibility of the changes:

It depends on how you look at it.  If you zoom in on the pictures you sent me, a difference is quite visible. 

Find attached my comparison of your two pictures as a screenshot: 
   comparison-before-after.png
I zoomed in on both of them the same amount, so the corresponding lines were of similar length (strangely, they look different--I guess you made them sligthly differently). 

To see the difference, you have to make the image about 10.5 inches wide on your screen (because my screen is 10.5 inches wide).

In your first image, the grave accent ceases to be distinct as a left-slanting stroke at about 14px.  In your second image, made with the submitted changes, it ceases to be distinct below 11 px.

Thanks again!

Well, LRN, I changed it in the direction you seem to be asking for.  It doesn't really make the accents more distinct at 7pt on my screen, but it is visible at 8pt. 

I think the overall effect is good: now the weight of the accents seems better balanced between the dots on the i and j, and the punctuation marks.  (Before they were thinner than either).

It's not clear what's to be done with macron and breve.  Since they're both long and thin anyway, maybe it's better to leave them.

Thanks for your patience!

Hi, LRN,

I ran across this again, and reviewed it.

First, I re-worked the HTML file to be correct and easier to work with (attached).

Looking at it in Firefox, I have to say, at the smallest sizes, the grave accent is scarcely discernable as such.

But then I noticed, you specify "8px" a pixel-size.  Pixel sizes are device-dependent.  If I need explicit sizes, I always use points "8pt".  At this size, on my browser, the grave accent is quite discernable as such (still light, but).

Now, font sizes in web browsers are notoriously different from font sizes in other apps (due to an incomprehensible choice made by MS in the late 1990's).  So I tried the same kind of thing in Gedit.

At 8 points, I find the grave accent is just barely discernable as such.  It is still quite distinct from the straight quote.

I looked for other serifed monospace fonts.  My system has an Adobe courier (packaged as a pfb file with Tex-Live).  Now, the style of accents in Courier is rather different from FreeMono (which, again, derives from the old URW++ fonts).  They are heavier, almost as heavy as the punctuation, whereas in FreeMono, accents have width equal to the stem width of the letters.  (Also this Courier has no Russian, but that's not the point.)

Because it is heavier and placed higher, the grave accent in Courier will remain distinct (to my eyes) to even smaller point sizes, even to 7pt -- but at 6pt it too becomes indistinct.

Images of some of the smaller tests are attached.

That all said, again, it was style choice of the original designers, a substantial change in the shape of this glyph would be a very big change.  To be consistent, it would involve changing this accent in many dozens of letters, as well as several of the other accents (caron and hacek are similar), and then to do the similar thing for 4 font faces.

At this point, I'm still not willing to do that to achieve readability at 7pt.

(file #26717,

So, the answer basically is "tweak Firefox settings and/or use style hacking addons to make sure that on any web-site you visit, that uses any kind of HTML code or CSS, any text that uses FreeMono is made at least 15pt"?

Sorry, just realized that fonttest_01.html is a bit broken. Here's a fixed version.

(file #25846)

Hi again LRN,

First, the primary function of U+0060 is as a grave accent (this is what it is called in Unicode).  That association affects its shape.

It would be nice to have the original document you used to generate the image.  I made my own HTML and viewed it in the latest FireFox on Ubuntu Linux 12.04.  See attached.

One issue is apparent: the grave accent in sans was indeed badly spaced, so that it almost touched the preceding character.  This is now fixed.

As a grave accent, the shape of the glyph is constrained by the need for accented letters to fit in the bounds.  This is a messy business in some cases (e.g. Vietnamese).  It's a balance.  For the purpose of screen display in very small font sizes...I would say it's very debatable that the grave accent should look like the one, say, from TeX fonts.  It's more important that it is distinguishable from the acute, which it is.

If you need a glyph of similar dimensions to the straight single quote, I would suggest U+2032 (prime, or minute) U+2035 (reversed prime).  I don't think there is a "backtick" in Unicode, per se.

Thanks!

(file #25841,