TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Tue May 14 17:24:04 EDT 2024
FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE
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OpenType hullaballoo from FontShop San Francisco
The FontShop message from Petra Weitz starts like this: Heard all the hullaballoo about OpenType, but bored to death by technical jargon? We don't blame you. and goes on as follows: With its scalability and typographic features, OpenType is clearly the font format of the future. It recommends: OpenType does everything that the old PostScript and TrueType formats can do, and they are compatible with all modern operating systems and software. Ditch those old files and upgrade your favorite fonts to OpenType. OK, time for a reality check: TrueType and PostScript are both scalable and have neat typographic features---they are not different from OpenType features. In its basic form, OpenType is a raw shell around TrueType and PostScript. In its sophisticated form, it offers built-in ligatures and glyph replacement information. One could also have glyph replacement and ligature functionality with PostScript and TrueType, a fact often omitted by the OpenType supporters! I have been using ligatures with type 1 fonts for over 15 years in a TeX environment, so the OpenType hype is quite incredible to some oldtimers like me. To advise people to ditch those old files is just commercial spam: pay a second time for the same fonts, please. To hear all this from FontShop, which I consider one of the best font companies, is quite disappointing. |
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |