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TrueType

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TrueType refers to an outline font standard first developed by Apple Computer and later embraced by Microsoft, as a competitor to Adobe Systems, Inc.'s Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. Glyphs in TrueType fonts are made of quadratic Bezier curves.

Interestingly, once it was developed TrueType was largely ignored by Apple. Microsoft, on the other hand, has aggressively pushed TrueType into Windows and includes a fairly useful library of TT fonts with their systems. In addition they have recently added a number of new font smoothing technologies, including ClearType which can significantly improve readability on LCD based displays.

The standard includes a virtual machine that executes programs inside the font that "hint" the glyphs (that is, modify them slightly so that the outline rasterizer produces fewer artifacts).

The FreeType project attempts to create an independent implementation of the TrueType standard. It ran into legal problems because the hinting virtual machine was patented, a fact not mentioned in the TrueType standards. More recent FreeType releases include an automatic hinter that analyzes glyph shapes and corrects them.

Links:

Article originally based on FOLDOC's article on TrueType, used with permission.

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