Thanks to Adobe, which contributed a new hinting (and parsing) engine, an application can select between ‘freetype’ and ‘adobe’.

Right now, the default engine is ‘freetype’. However, this will change: After a certain time of intensive testing it is planned to make ‘adobe’ the default due to its superior rendering results.

The following example code demonstrates how to select Adobe's hinting engine (omitting the error handling).

  FT_Library  library;
  FT_Face     face;
  FT_UInt     hinting_engine = FT_CFF_HINTING_ADOBE;


  FT_Init_FreeType( &library );

  FT_Property_Set( library, "cff",
                            "hinting-engine", &hinting_engine );

This property can be used with FT_Property_Get also.

#define FT_CFF_HINTING_FREETYPE  0
#define FT_CFF_HINTING_ADOBE     1

A list of constants used for the hinting-engine property to select the hinting engine for CFF fonts.

By default, the Adobe CFF engine darkens stems at smaller sizes, regardless of hinting, to enhance contrast. Setting this property, stem darkening gets switched off.

Note that stem darkening is never applied if FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE is set.

  FT_Library  library;
  FT_Face     face;
  FT_Bool     no_stem_darkening = TRUE;


  FT_Init_FreeType( &library );

  FT_Property_Set( library, "cff",
                            "no-stem-darkening", &no_stem_darkening );

This property can be used with FT_Property_Get also.