Hinting can improve the rendering of fonts. But those fonts will be rendered differently by different rasterisers on different platforms and often in different applications as well, (compare for example text in the Safari and Explorer browsers on the same Windows computer). If the designer’s intention is consistent cross-platform rendering, the fonts also need to use consistent design across similar letters.

It is clear that one day font hinting will finally become obsolete, but it is not clear when that day will come. The most widely used operating system in the world, Windows XP (still 58.4% market share, as of this writing), has ClearType turned off by default, so unhinted fonts typically do not display well at small sizes. Whether we like it or not, it looks like hinting will be around for quite some time. But if you like how fonts display on the Mac at small sizes, you can take that as proof that it is already possible to render text well without any hinting at all.

Peter Biľak.