Served static fonts that were instanced from variable sources lack proper hinting

They only have minimal prep and gasp tables which, to be frank, is technically as good as nothing, especially on Windows platforms at 96 dpi (100%).

Examples of static fonts instanced from variable sources that lack proper hinting include Google’s Roboto Mono, the very own Google Sans, which means almost all Google products look blurry, and even YouTube Sans.

Even Arimo, which had fantastic hinting is now horrible because it was changed from static to variable sources on Google Fonts. In fact the static Medium and SemiBold weights are broken which makes it partly unusable, such that there was very little to gain in switching to a variable source but a lot to lose in readability.

This isn’t recent but it has not always been like that. Roboto and Open Sans are examples of very well-hinted fonts, which clashes greatly with the unhinted fonts used throughout Google products. However even just by slight autohinting such as the case with Noto fonts there already is enormous gain in value in readability, legibility and general ease of sight.

In the beginning of Google Fonts, there used to be some attention towards hinting but now it appears increasingly more neglected. I cannot stress enough the importance of hinting. I am sure you have the data to verify the number of Windows platform desktop devices being served, where poor hinting impacts most, especially outside of first-world economies. Other than Windows, there are plenty low DPI devices, both desktop and mobile, that are still on the market and suffer from the neglect.

Moreover many Linux distributions in particular do not use fontconfig’s autohint-if-no-hinting configuration file by default, meaning that even downstream devices based on a Linux platform with a FreeType renderer capable of autohinting suffer from the lack of hinting because there has to be a manual intervention to symlink the correct configuration file to the appropriate location.

I can assure you people notice the lack of hinting however they cannot quite place the slight blurriness. Try using Gmail in any browser for a week on a Windows device set to 96 dpi (Scale set to 100%).

Ten years ago, @davelab6 was making the following video to draw attention to hinting. Now its title is typeset with an unhinted YouTube Sans.

I kindly request you to again prioritize serving properly hinted fonts.