The principles of the present invention relate to adaptively filtering outlines of typographic characters to simply representative control data. A filtering module receives a set of control points (and instructions for connecting the control points) representing a graphical object, such as, for example, a typographical character. The filtering module adaptively filters out some variations in the outline of the graphical object to reveal common edges of the outline. The filtering module generates simplified control data that represents an outline of the common edges (e.g., representing a block "T"). Accordingly, based on the simplified control data, a computing system may be able to more efficiently recognize the graphical object represented by the control points.
The principles of the present invention relate to iteratively solving constraints in a font-hinting language. A computing system accesses a more complex constraint that can not be natively expressed based on the vocabulary of the font-hinting language, the more complex constraint constraining at least a portion of the outline. The computing system decomposes the more complex constraint into a plurality of simpler constraints that can be natively expressed based on the vocabulary of the font-hinting language. The computer system represents each of the simpler constraints in corresponding font-hinting language instructions that can be iteratively processed to at least approximate a solution to the more complex constraint. The font-hinting language instructions are iteratively processed at the computing system or another computing system to cause a graphical object to comply, within a specific tolerance, with the more complex constraint.