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About fonts: Overview
A brief history of TrueTypeThe TrueType digital font format was originally designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It wasa means of avoiding per-font royalty payments to the owners of other font technologies,and a solution to some of the technical limitations of Adobe's Type 1 format.Originally code named "Bass" (because these were scalable fonts and you can scale afish), and later "Royal", the TrueType format was designed to be efficient in storage and processing, and extensible. It was also built to allow the use of hinting approaches already in use in the font industry as well as the development of new hinting techniques,enabling the easy conversion of already existing fonts to the TrueType format. Thisdegree of flexibility in TrueType's implementation of hinting makes it extremely powerful when designing characters for display on the screen. Microsoft had also beenlooking for an outline format to solve similar problems, and Apple agreed to licenseTrueType to Microsoft.Apple included full TrueType support in its Macintosh operating system, System 7, inMay 1991. Its more recent development efforts include TrueType GX, which extends theTrueType format as part of the new graphics architecture QuickDraw GX for the MacOS.TrueType GX includes some Apple-only extensions to the font format, supporting StyleVariations and the Line Layout Manager.Microsoft first included TrueType in Windows 3.1, in April 1992. Soon afterwards,Microsoft began rewriting the TrueType rasterizer to improve its efficiency and performance and remove some bugs (while maintaining compatibility with the earlier version). The new TrueType rasterizer, version 1.5, first shipped in Windows NT 3.1.There have since been some minor revisions, and the version in Windows 95 and NT 3.51is version 1.66. The new capabilities include enhanced features such asfont smoothing (or more technically, grayscale rasterization).Microsoft's ongoing development effort includes the TrueType Open specification.TrueType Open will work on any Microsoft platform and Apple Macintosh machine, andincludes features to allow multi-lingual typesetting and fine typographic control.The next extension to the TrueType Open format is to be TrueType Open version 2, acollaborative effort with Adobe Systems to produce a format capable of containing bothTrueType (and Open) and PostScript data.More informationLaurence Penney has posted an article on the history of TrueType which includes aninterview with Sampo Kaasila, the principal inventor of TrueType, on hisTrueTypeTypography[external link please see our disclaimer ] Web site. TrueType Hinting (1 of 5):
 
IntroductionMicrosoft TypographyJune 1997
 Hinting 
is an essential part of the production of a quality font. It is indispensable in everyfont intended to be legible at small sizes on low resolution output devices. A well-hintedfont offers the quality only provided in the past by hand-tuned bitmaps - but with all thespeed and reduced memory requirements which characterize outline font formats.Moreover, because the bitmaps are still produced by an outline font, text can be rotated,scaled and viewed at different sizes, and even printed out while maintaining highimage quality.The TrueType font format offers far more power and flexibility in its hinting capabilitiesthan other font formats. Well-hinted TrueType fonts are consequently the best fonts whenit comes to displaying text on the screen.This paper explains exactly what hinting is, why it is necessary, and how the TrueTypeapproach to hinting differs from the approaches adopted by other font formats. As ameans of demonstrating the power of the TrueType format, several examples are shownhere which compare TrueType fonts side-by-side with equivalent PostScript Type 1 fontsrendered by the ATM rasterizer.
Next section:
 what is hinting?TrueType Hinting (2 of 5):What is Hinting?At its most basic level
hinting 
(or, more accurately,
instructing 
) a font is a method of defining exactly which pixels are turned on in order to create the best possible character  bitmap shape at small sizes and low resolutions. Since it is a glyph's outline thatdetermines which pixels will constitute a character bitmap at a given size, it is oftennecessary to modify the outline to create a good bitmap image; in effect modifying theoutline until the desired combination of pixels is turned on. A
hint 
is a mathematicalinstruction added to the font to distort a character's outline at particular sizes. Technically,hints result in operations which modify a contours' scaled control point co-ordinates before the outline is scan converted. In TrueType a combination of these hints, and theresulting distortions, affords a very fine degree of control over the bitmapshape produced.Modifying an outline in this manner results in what is known as a
 grid-fit 
. On the basis of the instructions contained in the individual font file, the TrueType rasterizer adjusts theglyph outlines to fit the bitmap grid appropriate for whichever size the text is to bedisplayed at. This outline adjustment is carried out on a case-by-case basis and isillustrated in
 figure 1
below.
 
Figure 1a. An outline that hasn't been grid-fitted. Note how poorly the outlinecorresponds to the pixel pattern, andabove all how awkward the bitmap of theM is.Figure 1b. The same outline grid-fitted. Nowthe outline has been adjusted to fit snuglyaround each pixel, ensuring that the correct pixels are turned on.
Grid-fitting 
explicitly ensures that certain features of the glyphs are regularized, andallows us to overcome many of the problems traditionally associated with displaying textat low resolutions. Because the outlines are only distorted at a specified number of smallsizes, the contours of the letterforms at higher resolutions remain unchanged,and undistorted.Although many font formats and applications offer some hinting facilities, these hintstypically consist of a few global parameters that are only capable of specifying distancesthat should be kept the same. TrueType enables the designer to stipulate exactly how theglyphs and their spacing will appear at low resolutions in isolation as well as within atext setting.
Next section:
 why is hinting necessary?TrueType Hinting (3 of 5):Why is Hinting Necessary?Scaling an
unmodified 
outline's control point co-ordinates to the small sizes of acomputer screen can result in severe quality control problems. At low resolutions, withfew pixels available to describe the character shapes, features such as stem weights,crossbar widths and serif details can become irregular, inconsistent or even missedcompletely. These irregularities detract substantially from the legibility and overallattractiveness of a text setting.These problems are a result of the
absolute
and
 finite
size of the pixel. Mathematicallyscaling a character outline presents no problem until the pixel grid of the output device isintroduced; at this point it is possible that parts of the outline will pass through only afraction of a pixel, rather than containing the pixel completely. If the pixel is turned on in
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