Comment 11 for bug 611221

This seems to be the wrong way round. We design in order to deliver the
highest possible aesthetics regardless of the numerical values, and it's
the hinting stage where we adjust these divergences to make them look
consistent at smaller sizes. Hinting introduces regularity and
consistency where the design optically had it but numerically didn't.
Adjusting the design to introduce numerical consistency will result in
an inferior design that looks wrong to the human eye.

The accents are placed so they are optically, not numerically, centred
over the main character. If there are problems with the placement at
specific rasterized sizes, the hinting can be adjusted to counteract it,
but it would be wrong to compromise the design just to make it rasterize
right at small sizes, when we have hinting to do specifically that.

I do repeat that it is *absolutely intentional* that the four strokes of
the M in Ubuntu Bold are completely different numerical widths, by a
very large margin - in this case a 22% difference between thinnest and
thickest stroke. Open any monoline sans serif font in a font editor and
you'll find exactly the same thing - despite appearing monoline, there
is always an apparently large numerical difference between the strokes,
with the difference increasing rapidly as the weight increases.

Look at the M as it's designed - does it look balanced and consistent
despite an apparent 22% "error"? Yes - because it's designed to *look*
right not *measure* right. To give the strokes identical numerical
widths would result in a design that simply looked wrong - the third
stroke (the second upstroke) would look much too heavy compared to the
rest, despite being numerically the same. Again, hinting is used to
normalize the values at smaller sizes - we don't and won't compromise
the design and aesthetics just to make the hinting easier.

Dave