Automatic synthesis of contrast controlled grayscale characters with component-based parametrisable fonts

A few years ago, a perceptually-tuned grayscale character generation technique was developed in order to automatically synthesize grayscale characters looking like manually-tuned pixmap characters. Weight and contrast controlled grayscale characters are obtained by grid-fitting the scaled character contours. However, this technique requires that hinting information be added to the outline font description. Adding hinting information to each outline character generally requires a considerable amount of human intervention. Our component-based parametrisable font system is a newly developed font description and reproduction technology. It incorporates for each basic character shape a software method responsible for the synthesis of an instance of that character. A given font is synthesized by providing appropriate font parameters to these character synthesis methods. Numerous concrete fonts can be derived by simply varying the parameters. Such variations offer high flexibility for synthesizing derived fonts (variations in condensation, weight and contrast) and enable saving a considerable amount of storage space. This paper shows that with component-based parametrisable fonts, high quality perceptually-tuned grayscale characters can be generated without requiring hinting information. Generating perceptually-tuned grayscale characters with parametrized component-based fonts consists in automatically adapting the phase of some of the character's parameters in respect to the underlying grid and in ensuring that thin character parts are strong enough not to disappear (weight-control).