Comment 7 for bug 660420

There have been various design strategies to make lowercase legible at heights smaller than 5px, usually by angling the bowls something like so:

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I was reminded of Vincent Connare's example of shape modification through hinting, found here: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/hinting/hinttut7.htm

So it might be possible, technically, to hint a font to be legible (more or less) at such extremely small sizes, although I suspect even the most visually acute programmer doesn't work at less than 9ppem.