TrueType & PostScript Type 1: What's the Difference?

By Thomas W. Phinney
Version 1.51, October 1, 1997

(C) Copyright 1995-1997 by Thomas Phinney, but permission is granted to duplicate

and distribute this information for any non-profit purpose, as long as it is reproduced
in full, unedited, and the author and copyright information (this paragraph) is
retained. The author also requests that he be contacted by e-mail prior to any
publication or redistribution, so that the most recent version may be used. Versions of
this document are available in ASCII text, HTML and Acrobat PDF (both 2.0-
compatible and Web-optimized for Reader 3.0). Special thanks to David Lemon,
Kathleen Tinkel, Tom Rickner, and Kaspar Brand for their invaluable feedback;
however, any errors are the author's sole responsibility.

Commonalities
TrueType (TT) and PostScript Type 1 (PS1) are both multi-platform outline font
standards for which the technical specifications are openly available. "Multi-platform"
means that both font types are usable on multiple sorts of computer systems. "Outline
font" means that they describe letter shapes ("glyphs") by means of points, which in
turn define lines and curves.

This representation is resolution independent, meaning that outlines, by their very

nature, can be scaled to pretty much any arbitrary size. Depending on the particular
program being used and the operating system it's run under, there may be upper and
lower limits to the size the font can be scaled to, but few users will ever encounter
these limits.

An outline font must be represented by the dots of the output device, whether it's
screen pixels or the dots of a laser, ink-jet or wire-pin printer. The process of
converting the outline to a pattern of dots on the grid of the device is called
"rasterization."

When there aren't enough dots making up the glyph (such as at small si= zes or low
resolutions), there can be inconsistencies in the representation of certain letter
features, at a single size, due to different rounding based on how the outline happens
to sit on the grid. A common form of this is that the widths of the letter stems can vary
when they shouldn't. Worse, key features of the glyphs can disappear at small sizes.

However, PostScript Type 1 and TrueType fonts both have a means of dealing with
these inconsistencies, called "hinting." This consists of additional information
encoded in the font to help prevent these problems.

Brief History
PostScript predates TrueType by about six years. First, we had many different formats
for digital fonts, none of which were standardized. Then Apple adopted Adobe's
PostScript page description language (PDL) for its Apple LaserWriter printer in 1985.
This, combined with the introduction of desktop publishing software, sparked a
revolution in page layout technology.

Soon the PostScript language was adopted for use in higher-end imagesetting devices,
and became the native operating mode and language of many graphics programs as
well. PostScript's dominance seemed assured. Adobe was in complete control of the
PostScript technology at this point. Although the command structure of the PostScript
language was publicly available, and it was possible for someone to build a PostScript
interpreter to compete with Adobe's rasterizing software, it wouldn't be able to
interpret the hints. This was because the PostScript font specification for Type 1 fonts,
which included hinting, was not publicly available. Adobe had only released the
specifications for Type 3 fonts, which had some minor advantages, but did not image
well on low resolution devices.

It rapidly became obvious to the major system software creators (Apple, Microsoft,
and later IBM) that it was important to have scaleable font technology supported at
the level of the operating system itself. But neither Apple nor Microsoft wanted to
have a key piece of their system software technology controlled by an outside
company. So Apple developed their own scaleable font technology, first code-named
Royal, and later introduced as TrueType.

Apple traded the technology with Microsoft in exchange for the latter's TrueImage
PostScript clone technology (which was buggy at the time, and never got used by
Apple, although it has surfaced in various later incarnations). The TrueType
specifications would be made public, and TrueType would be built into the next
versions of the Mac and Windows operating systems.

Adobe's pre-emptive response started with the release of the long-protected

specifications for the PostScript Type 1 font format in March 1990. This was followed
by introduction of Adobe Type Manager (ATM) software in mid-1990. ATM scales
Type 1 (but not Type 3) PostScript fonts for screen display and imaging on both
PostScript and non-PostScript printers.

In early 1991, TrueType for the Mac became available, followed by the Windows 3.1
implementation. Now, with either TrueType or ATM, Mac users (and later Windows
and OS/2 users) could actually see on-screen at any size what the font output would
look like.

So now there are two widely used outline font specifications, one (TrueType) built
into the operating systems used by over 95% of computers world-wide, and the other
(PostScript Type 1) both well-established and supported directly by most high-end
output devices.

But as time goes on, the practical differences begin to blur. Support for TrueType is
built in to many implementations of PostScript Level 2, and is standard in PostScript
3. Similarly, the ATM rasterizing technology is slated to be incorporated into
Windows NT 5.0, side-by-side with TrueType. Apple's forthcoming "Rhapsody"
operating system uses Display PostScript as the basis of its entire imaging model,
which also gives it native support for PostScript fonts. Under the new OpenType
format (discussed later), either TrueType or PostScript outlines can be put into a
TrueType-style wrapper. Under the new OpenType format (discussed later), either
TrueType or PostScript outlines can be put into a TrueType-style wrapper.

Technical Differences
The first difference between TrueType and PostScript fonts is their use of different
sorts of mathematics to describe their curves. Conversions between the two formats
are typically imperfect: although mathematically speaking the quadratic B-splines of
TrueType are a subset of the cubic Bézier curves of PostScript, there are usually small
rounding errors no matter which direction one converts fonts; however, the errors are
greater in going from PostScript to TrueType than vice versa. More importantly,
hinting information does not directly translate in either direction between the two
formats.

Some articles have said that TrueType fonts require more points than PostScript, or
that they take longer to rasterize because the math is more complicated. In fact, the
math is simpler (quadratics are simpler than cubics), and a few shapes take fewer
points in TrueType than in PostScript (a circle takes twelve points in PostScript vs.
eight in TrueType). However, some PostScript rasterizers are unsurprisingly going to
be faster at dealing with PostScript, and it's true that most fonts will end up using
more points in TrueType, even if the mathematical description of the curves is
simpler.

The primary advantage of TrueType over PS1 fonts is the fact that TrueType allows
better hinting. PostScript Type 1 fonts can hint vertical and horizontal features,
overshoots, stem snaps, equal counters, and shallow curves ("flex"). Several of these
can have a threshold pixel size at which they activate.

TrueType hints can do all that PostScript can, and almost anything else, as defined by
the very flexible instructions. This includes controlling diagonals, moving
speci=DEed points on the glyph outlines at specific arbitrary sizes to improve
legibility. This ability to move points at a specific point size allows the font
production staff to hand-tune the bitmap pattern produced by the outline at any
specified size.

This is really symptomatic of a larger philosophical difference. PostScript uses

"dumb" fonts and a "smart" interpreter, while TrueType uses relatively smarter fonts
and a dumber interpreter. This means that PostScript hints tell the rasterizer what
features ought to be controlled, and the rasterizer interprets these using its own
"intelligence" to decide how to do it. Therefore, if Adobe upgrades the PostScript
interpreter, the hinting can be improved.

Contrariwise, TrueType puts very specific instructions (some TT aficionados don't

like to call them hints) into the font to control how it will appear. Thus the font
producer has the potential for very fine control over what happens when the font is
rasterized under different conditions. However, it requires serious effort on the part of
a font developer to actually take advantage of this greater hinting potential.

Another factor is the fact that TrueType rasterizing is built into several operating
systems. Both the Mac OS and all the current incarnations of Windows support
TrueType directly. These operating systems will rasterize TrueType fonts for the
screen, and handle the sending of them to the printer, whether as bitmaps or as fonts in
some format the printer can understand.

On the other hand, PostScript Type 1 font support is built into only one significant
operating system: OS/2. This OS will do for PS1 fonts what the others do for
TrueType. However, recent agreements between Microsoft and Adobe will include
the ATM rasterizer for PostScript Type 1 as a part of Windows NT 5.0 and higher.

Scaling PostScript fonts on current versions of the Mac or Windows essentially

requires the Adobe Type Manager (ATM) software, which handles the rasterizing to
the screen, and rasterizes or converts the fonts for non-PostScript printers.
Technically, ATM is not required to use PostScript fonts on PostScript printers, but
ATM is required to display the font accurately on screen at arbitrary sizes.

Although ATM is commercial software, it comes with virtually every Adobe

application, and with every commercial Adobe typeface package. At this point, it's
still an add-on, rather than an integral part of current Windows and Mac operating
systems. Apple long ago agreed to increase its system-level support for PostScript, but
has not aggressively pursued doing so.

A smaller, but consistent, advantage has to do with the physical storage of the fonts.
TrueType fonts have all the data in a single file (although Windows 3.1 will create a
"FOT" file for installed TT fonts, as a pointer to the location of the font data).

However, PostScript fonts require two separate files: one contains the character
outlines, and the other contains metrics data (character widths and kern pairs). On the
Macintosh, the current system software (System 7.5.5 and earlier) requires PS1 fonts
to have not only the outline font, but also a bit-mapped screen font in at least one size,
which contains the metrics data. For Windows systems using PostScript, a "PFB" file
contains the outlines, while a "PFM" file carries the metrics. OS/2 uses an "OFM" file
for the same purpose.

The system-independent "AFM" metrics file can be converted to a Windows PFM file
upon installation by ATM, or can be used by a font editing program along with the
outline to create a screen font for the Mac that includes any kerning pairs in the
original.

On the other hand, PostScript's pair of Files are often smaller than TrueType's single
file. The size difference ranges from only a 5% savings for an average font, to as
much as a doubling of size for TrueType fonts that actually have extensive "hinting"
instructions.

Also, most high-end output devices use PostScript as their internal page description
language. PostScript fonts can be sent directly to these devices. It used to be the case
that TrueType fonts were either downloaded as bitmaps or required that the TrueType
rasterizer be downloaded as a PostScript program, which slowed printing a bit.

More recently, many PostScript Level 2 printers (and all PostScript 3 printers) have
the TrueType rasterizer in ROM, built in. However, with some Windows printer
drivers the user must change the printer driver settings in software to take advantage
of this feature (downloading TrueType as "Type 42," which is basically a PostScript
wrapper around the TrueType data).
Further Practical Differences
Many of the theoretical advantages of TrueType are not actually realized in most
commercially available TrueType fonts. PostScript backers point to a number of
problems that still make PostScript fonts a better solution for many users. Besides the
above-mentioned issue of the language of the output device, there are four other
practical issues that even the score for PostScript:

First, at present many of the commercially available TrueType fonts one sees at the
corner software store are of poor quality, coming in "zillion-fonts-for-a-buck"
collections. Many of these fonts were originally shareware or public domain
PostScript fonts, and have been converted to TrueType using some basic automatic
utility. The outlines and hinting are no better than they were in the PostScript
versions, and will suffer slightly in almost any automatic conversion. Usually in the
case of extremely cheap collections, they weren't the best quality PostScript fonts
even before conversion to TrueType.

Of course, TrueType backers point out that often these fonts were available before; it's
simply the availability of a universal font scaling technology that makes discount
fonts for the masses practical, and of course they are more likely to be released in the
most widely available format.

Second, as of this writing there is no font editing software available at the retail level
with native TrueType support, although this will change in late 1997 with the release
of FontLab 3.0. All prior retail font editing programs use only PostScript-style bézier
curves as their native operating mode. Exporting TrueType fonts from these programs
entails conversion, and some minor loss of accuracy. The other tools required to do
native editing of TrueType fonts, and to take advantage of the theoretical abilities of
TrueType hinting, cost thousands of dollars.

Regardless of the specific tools used, achieving first-class hinting in TrueType

currently requires intensive manual coding on a glyph-by-glyph basis. This requires
substantial time and expertise on the part of the person doing the hinting.

As a result, high-quality TrueType fonts are currently only available from a handful of
very large vendors, and only a minority of even those fonts really exploit the potential
of TrueType hinting.

Third, TrueType's hinting advantage only matters when hinting matters: when
outputting to low-resolution devices, or for screen display. The increasing, widespread
use of 600 dpi and better laser printers makes this less critical for print work. On the
other hand, the increasing importance of screen displays for multimedia production
and the Internet makes hinting more important.

Fourth, PostScript has some advantages simply from being the longer-established
standard, especially for serious graphic arts work. Service bureaus are standardized
on, and have large investments in, PostScript fonts. Most of the fonts which have
"expert sets" of old style figures, extra ligatures, true small capitals and the like are in
PostScript Type 1 format.

Although most major vendors have TrueType fonts, only a few (such as Bitstream)
offer their entire libraries in both formats. Most, like Linotype and Monotype, have
only a minority of their fonts in TrueType format. Given the current state of the tools,
it would take a concerted effort of many years to convert all the major vendors' font
libraries to TrueType.

A final issue that is often raised is the story that some PostScript devices, particularly
imagesetters, have problems either with TrueType fonts in general, or especially with
mixing TrueType and PostScript on the same page or the same line. This is mostly an
historical issue. More recent TrueType operating system implementations, and newer
PostScript raster image processing software, have resolved what few problems there
were early on.

According to Dov Isaacs, then Adobe's Manager of Quality Assurance, Printing &
Systems Division, "regardless of whether you are on a Mac or a PC running Windows
3.1 or above, you can mix TrueType and Type 1 with t= he caveat that you
should never have both TrueType and Type 1 fonts with the same exact names on the
same system." Having two fonts with identical names can confuse the operating
system, with unpredictable results.

Also, if using Windows, one may find that PostScript versions of the Windows
TrueType system fonts get substituted by the output device: Times New Roman
becomes Times-Roman, and Arial becomes Helvetica. Further, although the basic
spacing of the substituted fonts is identical, their kerning pairs are not. This can cause
text to reflow if one switches between two different-but-almost-the-same fonts on the
computer doing the typesetting, if the program supports kerning pairs (graphics and
DTP programs, and some better word processors).

Getting the same font on the actual output can be guaranteed by changing printer
settings in the printer control panel, to ensure the TrueType system fonts get used.
Hackers can also try editing the WIN.INI file on the computer that is doing the
printing (whether to device or file). Delete the relevant lines in the font substitution
section, so that the TrueType font used on-screen is also sent to the output device,
rather than a printer font being substituted. On Windows NT or Win95, Registry
settings control the same behavior. Alternatively, get a scalable version of the font
used in the printer, and use it instead of the system fonts.

One actual, but rare, source of problems is not inherent in TrueType, but a result of
the fact that rasterizing TrueType can require a bit more RAM in the raster image
processor (RIP) than rasterizing PostScript--primarily in older PostScript rasterizers
when the TrueType rasterizing program must be downloaded. If the RIP has barely
enough RAM, it's possible that this could push it over the edge. Service bureaus are
notoriously conservative about this sort of thing (understandably, since any delays or
problems can cost them money); your best bet is to consult with them, and if they
warn of potential problems, test something complex with a mix of fonts for future
reference.

Multiple Masters
The Multiple Master (MM) format is an extension of the Adobe Type 1 PostScript
font format. Essentially, it allows two design variations to be encoded as opposing
ends of a single design axis. Afterwards, any in-between state may be generated by
the user on need. Thus, an MM font could have a "weight" axis which has an ultra-
light master and an extra-black master, allowing any conceivable variation in
between. And this is only one possibility; almost any two design extremes could
theoretically be put on a multiple master, as long as their Bézier control points can be
matched up to allow interpolation.

Multiple axes are also possible, but each additional axis doubles the number of master
fonts that must be created, because each possible extreme must be designed
separately. Imagine a dimensional space, with each corner requiring a master. Thus a
three-axis MM (a cube) must have eight master fonts; a four-axis font (the theoretical
maximum) would need sixteen master fonts, which is one reason nobody has released
one yet.

The primary uses to which MM technology has been put are: weight (light to bold);
width (condensed to extended); and optical size (text to display). A few MM fonts
experiment with other forms, such as the existence or type of serifs. All of these
adjustments can be done by cruder means, by creating separate fonts, or even just
ignored; but MMs allow typographically aware users to create the precise, desired
typeface in a more refined fashion.

As of this writing, fewer than 36 MM fonts have been released by major font
vendors--and more than half by Adobe. Using Multiple Masters also requires that the
user have Adobe Type Manager, but this is a near-necessity for PostScript fonts
anyway.

There are a few older devices with implementations of PostScript level 1 that can't
handle MM fonts, notably Apple's Personal LaserWriter NT, the HP LaserJet IIID, the
PostScript cartridge for the HP LaserJet IIP, the TI microLaser PostScript series, and
some older PostScript clones.

A more common problem with MM technology is that it can be inconvenient to access

additional MM variants. At present, much of the time, the user must use ATM (or a
"Font Creator" utility with Mac ATM prior to 4.0) to instantiate each additional font
variant in order to make it available to the system. There are a few exceptions:
Microsoft Word 6 & 7 support direct creation of MM instances on the fly by typing
the exact name of the instance (easy, but hardly obvious). PageMaker 6 also has
integrated support for creating and using MM instances, as does QuarkXPress 3.3x,
via an included extension. But because this is less convenient, and many users are
unfamiliar with MM technology, it often makes more economic and marketing sense
to release a font set as multiple Type 1 variants, even if it was designed using multiple
master-style interpolation. An example of this trend is Jonathan Hoefler's reworking
of Didot.

If there were better system-wide and/or application-level support for MM fonts, they
might be more popular. CompuServe DTP Forum Sysop and typography writer
Kathleen Tinkel says, "if MM fonts were to become easier to use, I think we'd see
another two dozen fonts very quickly."

QuickDraw GX & GX Fonts

Another attempt to enhance these typographic niceties (and then some) is Apple's
QuickDraw GX, and GX fonts. GX is not specific to either TrueType or PostScript
Type 1; GX fonts are an extension of either font specification, although there are
some additional features possible in TrueType GX fonts.

TrueType GX fonts have essentially the same capability as Multiple Masters vis-à-vis
design axes. However, they also have greater flexibility in the use of these axes.
Although master fonts can be put at each corner of the design space, each axis has a
minimum requirement of one new outline at the end of each axis; this means that
instead of doubling the number of masters, each axis could simply add one instead.
Thus, for example, it would be possible to have an eight-axis GX font that only had
nine master designs, instead of the 256 it would take in Multiple Master technology.
Of course, designers taking advantage of this feature must be careful, because the
corners of the design space must be created by vector addition, which has the potential
to create unexpected problems in the corners of the design space.

Of equal or greater interest to the average user is the potential inherent in the GX Line
Layout Manager. This bit of system software can interpret and manage additional
information encoded in a font to do all sorts of nifty things, such as automatic
intelligent ligature substitution, or optically aligning the edges of text based on the
actual shapes of the letterforms rather than the outside of the character bounding box.

GX fonts also allow extended character sets beyond the usual 256 allowed by standard
TrueType and PostScript type 1 fonts. These could be alternate letterforms, or those
characters usually included in "expert sets," or foreign languages, or whatever the
designer desires. The difference between this and the currently available "expert sets"
and "alternates" is that the user simply chooses between stylistic variations encoded in
the single font, which could include specific languages, old style figures, ligatures or
swashes. Further, either regular or special characters can also substitute themselves
intelligently based on adjacent characters, or their position in the word or the line.

Unfortunately, the GX font specification has not met with wide acceptance as of this
writing. One reason is that it is only available for the Macintosh, and most major
layout software is actively seeking cross-platform compatibility; therefore the vendors
are loathe to adopt a "standard" that doesn't have a counterpart for Windows (and
other systems they may support).

Further, GX is a model which wants to take on many functions which have previously
been areas where high-end layout applications have put considerable effort into
adding features and value for the end user. The makers of such applications would be
understandably reluctant to abandon their previous hyphenation and justification
capabilities (for example) in favor of GX capabilities which are delivered "free" to the
lowliest word processor which chooses to support GX.

While most existing applications will work with GX installed, if they don't access
most of its features, why should a user bother risking potential incompatibilities?

The result is that none of the biggest software vendors have released any applications
which are GX-savvy. There are about a dozen programs that offer some degree of
support for GX, including two page layout programs, Uniqorn and Ready-Set-Go 7
GX, andLightningDraw, a drawing package.

With Apple's recent changes in operating system strategy, the future of GX is unclear.
Apple has announced its intention to continue GX typography in the upcoming NeXT-
OS-based Mac operating system ("Rhapsody"), but this will presumably be without
the GX graphics model, and may be a somewhat different form of GX type. If Apple
pulls it off, Rhapsody could have the effect of increasing basic GX support; it
certainly worked for Apple when they fully integrated TrueType into version 7.0 of
their operating system.

Unicode
Unicode is an international standard for representing a broader character set using
two-byte encoding for each letter. This allows the encoding of 64,000 characters
instead of 256, essentially all the characters for every language in the world, each with
a unique ID. However, the Unicode specification only covers differences that have a
linguistic impact, such as accented characters. It does not deal with typographic
niceties such as ligatures, old style numbers, or small caps. To paraphrase Chuck
Bigelow, it may seem like a metaphysical distinction, but Unicode is a character
encoding, rather than a glyph encoding.

The result is that simply adding Unicode capability is very useful for non-English or
multi-lingual typography. However, it does not, in and of itself, aid in dealing with the
typographic issues addressed by, say, GX or OpenType.

The Unicode character encoding is directly supported by Windows NT. It is not

currently supported at the system level by any other major operating system.
However, OpenType (see below) is directly based on Unicode, and thus operating
systems that support OpenType will get Unicode support in the process, within
OpenType fonts.

National Language Support & WGL4

Windows 95 does not fully support Unicode, but has a less universal approach called
National Language Support. This allows use of TrueType fonts with more than the
usual 256 glyphs of Windows or Macintosh extended ASCII. For convenience, and to
help preserve compatibility with older programs, the user's selected language setting
determines which glyphs are accessible from the keyboard (as in, the correct ones for
the chosen language, assuming they're in the font).

The Windows "WGL4" character set is a specific NLS set of some 652 characters,
which include all the characters for every European language. This means all the usual
Latin regular and accented characters, plus Greek, Cyrillic, Turkish, a host of accented
characters, and IBM Linedraw thrown in for good measure. The basic Windows
system fonts (Arial, Courier, Times New Roman) have all been upgraded to the
WGL-4 glyph set. Only a few other TrueType fonts have this character set, such as
Microsoft's version of the Franklin Gothic family.

OpenType
This 1996 Adobe/Microsoft initiative surprised industry analysts. OpenType puts
either a PostScript or TrueType outline in a TrueType-style wrapper. Applications and
most operating system functions outside of the font subsystem will no longer care
which type of font is in this "wrapper." As part of the deal, Microsoft and Adobe
licensed the TrueType and PostScript font technologies to each other.

The OpenType format will support all the most advanced features of existing
TrueType and PostScript formats (much like GX), such as Multiple Master fonts (with
PostScript outlines), multilingual character sets with full Unicode support, and
extended character sets to support such typographic niceties as "true" small caps,
ligatures, fractions and alternate glyphs, all within the main font. OpenType supports
automatic glyph substitution so that one glyph can be substituted for a set (such as the
f-f-i ligature, or many Arabic characters), or multiple glyphs can be substituted for a
single one. Glyph substitution can be context sensitive, and/or activated by explicit
user activity. Uses of substitution would be a swash letter that's only used at the
beginning of a word or a line, when the "swash" behavior is turned on, formatting text
as true "small caps" or cycling through available alternate letter forms.

Although Seybold analysts reported on this as a victory for Microsoft and TrueType,
that's only true if you look at the publishing business in isolation. In the broad view, it
is really more of a win/win/win situation. Microsoft may finally get greater TrueType
acceptance in the high-end publishing market. Adobe gets PostScript font outline
support at the system level in Windows, potentially making the Adobe type library
more accessible to a broader range of potential buyers. Best of all, end users win by
getting a single cross-platform font format, eliminating one of the largest remaining
hassles for document transfer between Macintosh and Windows computers.

Apple has not yet announced support for OpenType in either Mac OS 8.x or the
NeXT-based "Rhapsody OS." However, Adobe and Microsoft seem committed to
delivering a complete solution. (Ironically, the OpenType approach to putting
TrueType and PostScript in a common wrapper is very much like what Apple did with
QuickDraw GX and GX-enabled fonts.)

What Does the Future Hold?

It is interesting to compare the future of Open-Type to the past of GX. GX features
are not actively supported by any of the leading graphics programs, and GX is
actively incompatible with some of them. Will OpenType succeed where GX seems to
have failed?

GX enthusiasts may say that all the features offered by OpenType can be had today in
GX, and that advanced typographic support is easier if one goes with GX.

But there are several key differences which may swing the future in OpenType's
favor. First, OpenType is in no way incompatible with existing applications and
fonts--it's not the case that one must embrace it all at once, as GX attempted. Second,
OpenType was created by the leading maker of business software (Microsoft) and the
leading creator of graphics software (Adobe). If even only these two companies'
applications support OpenType to start with, that would be much further than GX got
with mainstream applications.

On the other hand, applications that support OpenType may not do it as evenly as GX-
savvy apps support that technology. With GX, an application simply lets the GX
"Line Layout Manager" do all the work. With OpenType, the needed font information
is available through system calls, but it is up to each application to decide what to do
with it.

One thing that drives acceptance of some solution, whether GX or OpenType, is the
needs of the international markets. In particular, the Asian languages such as Chinese,
Japanese and Korean, which can't be represented by a single-byte font, require
something that supports larger character sets. This is essential for operating system
companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and very important to Adobe, which also
derives a large chunk of revenue from the Asian markets.

By mid-1998, initial OpenType font offerings, OS support, and the first actively
supporting applications should appear. This is also when the full version of Apple's
Rhapsody OS is scheduled to ship. At this time it should be much more apparent how
OpenType and GX support are shaping up, and whether the support and benefits of
either or both are sufficiently compelling to users. In the meantime, they are both
technologies worth keeping an eye on.

Conclusion
OpenType may be a savior in the font wars, but first it will have to be supported at the
operating system level, and applications will need to be re-engineered to take
advantage of its more whizzy features. Although existing font libraries could easily be
converted directly, it is only by the combining of fonts and the laborious addition of
new features that the greatest value can be added to them. This will take years. In the
meantime, users still have to choose.

There are some real differences between PostScript and TrueType--although the
relative advantages of each are often exaggerated by the boosters of one or the other
format. Each format-- and the combination of the two in OpenType--has extensions,
which offer the promise of new capabilities; but these are not yet widely adopted. In
practice, most users can usually use both formats, and mix them, without worrying a
great deal about the differences, which are usually transparent to the final viewer.

Nonetheless, there are definitely situations in which one format or the other may be
desirable, such as when particular expert sets are needed (more commonly available in
PostScript fonts), when TrueType doesn't work on a particular older imagesetter, or
when maximum legibility is needed for screen display (the best TrueType fonts).

© Thomas W. Phinney

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