Question: When the hinting is applied it will need to be in whole pixel width increments - no? If that’s the case maybe you can’t match the source - you just have to improve the pixelfont directly. Or are you using some kind of substition of alternative greyscale bitmaps for sets of common combinations of characters...

I am probably missing something since I haven’t even seen a greyscale font in use yet ( that I know of ).

I realized this morning that the issue simply is not an issue. I thought that a character in a pixelfont that has a non-pixel-integer width would cause subsequent glyphs to get misaligned... but they don’t! So it turns out hinting is not even necessary. BTW, I also noticed -more like was reminded of- something else: apps like Photoshop use only the pixel-integer values from the bitmaps/rendering (not the actual em values) to place glyphs, while Word for example does use the underlying “true” width value (resulting in occasional unsightly gaps, but accurate line ends/breaks).

hhp

Hmm Interesting. I have been looking at the way my monotype is rendered across platforms & in different apps. I had no idea how many wacky things would turn up. What I have been reading here on typophile about tuning the type to the method of delivery, paper, screen, & even to a rendering environment is SO TRUE.