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Font formats: PostScript, TrueType, OpenType
Which font format to choose?
We offer fonts in PostScript, TrueType and OpenType. When in doubt, select the OpenType or TrueType font format. These formats contain only one single file and therefore might be easier to install, rather than the two files which are required for PostScript. OpenType is the only cross-platform format where the same file will work on Macintosh and PC computers.
Choosing the format also depends on which languages you need to support. Our PostScript and TrueType fonts contain only 256 characters, while our OpenType Std contain over 1000 and OpenType Pro over 2000 characters per font. With a single OpenType Pro font you can typeset Latin, Greek and Cyrillic text. This is also the reason why our OpenType fonts are more expensive than the other two font formats.
Detailed information:
PostScript
PostScript or Type 1 fonts were developed by Adobe in 1985 for use with their PostScript printers. Initially, this font technology was available only from Adobe.
PostScript has traditionally been preferred by professional designers, publishers and printers because of the reliability and wider selection of fonts available in this format. PostScript has a clever rasterizing engine, and hinting of the font (screen optimization) is less important than in TrueType since it is taken care of at the system level.
PostScript fonts consist of two parts, a bitmapped screen file, which displays the font on the computer monitor, and a file defining the outline curves. A PostScript Type 1 font can contain also a third file, an Adobe Font Metrics (AFM) file that contains spacing and kerning information. Most commercial applications, however, use the screen file to extract this information.
Like TrueType fonts, PostScript fonts are scalable (the characters can be enlarged or reduced) with the help of a utility such as Adobe Type Manager (ATM). ATM technology is integrated into Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP, and also into Macintosh OS X.
PostScript fonts, which can access only 220 characters, are not compatible with Unicode, and are not cross-platform compatible.
How to install PostScript fonts.
More information on PostScript fonts:
http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/articles/ttvst1.htm
http://www.agfamonotype.co.uk/Services/Support.asp?show=postscript
http://www.font.to/downloads/TT_PS_OT.pdf
Download free ATM Light
http://www.adobe.com/products/atmlight/main.html
The TrueType format was jointly developed by Apple and Microsoft in 1991, several years after the release of the PostScript Type 1 font format. Despite its technical superiority (most of the system fonts on both Mac and Windows computers are TrueType) they never became popular amongst designers.
The TrueType format defines curves differently from PostScript fonts, and allows for the rendering of outlines with a hinting process, which improves the appearance of TrueType fonts in low-resolution output devices, such as a computer monitors and low-resolution printers. Hinting uses a powerful set of instructions to achieve superior on-screen legibility – similar to handmade bitmap fonts, but with the potential to scale it to any size. Unfortunately, hinting is very time-consuming to incorporate into the font, and only a few fonts take advantage of this technology. As a result, the average TrueType font appears to display with less quality on-screen than the corresponding PostScript one.
At Typotheque we offer special screen-optimized fonts which have been manually hinted, and are marked with the filename extension “Screen”. These fonts are excellent choices for reading lengthy texts on screen at small sizes with a high level of legibility.
TrueType fonts contain both the screen and printer font data in a single file, making the fonts easier to install. A TrueType font can theoretically contain over 65,000 characters, using Unicode standards. In reality few fonts contain more than 220 extended characters. TrueType fonts are not cross-platform compatible.
How to install TrueType fonts.
More information on TrueType fonts:
http://developer.apple.com/fonts/
http://www.agfamonotype.co.uk/Services/Support.asp?show=truetype
http://www.microsoft.com/typography
http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/articles/ttvst1.htm
http://www.font.to/downloads/TT_PS_OT.pdf
For more information about OpenType see our separate OpenType section.
The OpenType font format was jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft and first presented in 1996. It was only after 2000 that it became widely supported and used.
Like TrueType, OpenType fonts contain both the screen and printer font data in a single file. The OpenType format can contain either TrueType or PostScript font data, yet it can support expanded character sets (up to 65,000) and special typographic features. These may include various styles of figures (tabular, old-style, lining), small caps, ligatures, ordinals, and other extras. While OpenType allows todays type designers to build very complex fonts, not many fonts take advantage of these possibilities. Most OpenType fonts available today are simply converted PostScript fonts, limited to 220 characters in a single font.
Typotheque offers two different OpenType fonts: Our Pro fonts include support for over 70 languages, including Cyrillic, Greek, and small caps for each of the languages, and many other features. See our OpenType Pro. encoding. We also offer OpenType Std supporting most Latin-based languages, with plenty of typographic features, but without the extra character sets for Cyrillic, Greek, and Small Caps. Our OpenType fonts are defined by PostScript, rather than TrueType outlines (providing designers with better control of the outline).
Not all applications can take advantage of the special features of OpenType. Currently Adobe applications (InDesign, Illustrator, PhotoShop) provide advanced OpenType feature support. QuarkXPress 7 supports OpenType as well. Other applications like Freehand and earlier versions of QuarkXPress may use OpenType fonts, but not their advanced features. In these conditions, OTF fonts will behave like standard PostScript fonts.
InDesign and other OpenType-savvy applications, on the other hand, can activate OpenType features such as the automatic substitution of alternate glyphs, automatic ligatures, small capitals, swashes and old-style figures.
OpenType fonts are cross-platform compatible, and can be used on either Macintosh or Windows operating systems.
More information on OpenType fonts:
http://store.adobe.com/type/opentype/main.html
http://store.adobe.com/type/opentype/qna.html
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq9.htm
http://www.font.to/downloads/TT_PS_OT.pdf
http://www.agfamonotype.co.uk/PDFs/AboutOpenType.pdf
http://www.icograda.org/web/feature-past-single.shtml?pfl=feature-single-2.param&op2.rf1=192
http://www.icograda.org/web/feature-past-single.shtml?pfl=feature-single-2.param&op2.rf1=193
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