Off-curve misrendering
By Paul Flo Williams
Adam Hyde came up with a question about a misrendering of a font on the FontForge Users’ mailing list. A colleague had designed a font in FontForge which looked fine except when used in Adobe Illustrator (of unspecified version). He provided two examples of characters whose shapes had developed distinct “ears”.
Peter Baker suggested that the common feature in this case was that the first point of the contours was not on the curve. My investigations proceeded along the same lines, and suggested that more than just these two characters were affected.
I’ve modified the supplied font, Transmediale, to suggest how I think Illustrator will render all of the characters that I think will be misrendered. I’ve shown the “ears” in the image below.
The fix is simple enough in this case, as the start point of the contours can be changed in FontForge.
A quick test suggests that DejaVu fonts may also be misrendered. We will see.