TrueType fonts, at least, had the concept of "engine compensation" [0] during hinting. When specifying a relative distance to move points on the glyph outline, the hint program would classify the distance as "white", "black" or "grey" depending on whether it crossed over whitespace, ink, or a mix of the two. The interpreter could then round or tweak the distance slightly depending on the physical characteristics of the output media.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ttrefman/RM02/Chap2.html#e...