Talk:TrueType

Comment

I removed the statements "Apple has little input on TrueType and seems to largely ignore it, while Microsoft aggressively pushes it". What is the evidence for these claims? Both companies use TT in their operating systems, right? AxelBoldt

It happens to be flat-out wrong... Apple is still putting a of development into TrueType, for example the 'Zapf' table. [1] — David Remahl 13:13, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

FreeType

There is a link to the FreeType article, yet that just redirects you to [TrueType], is this intended? FreeType, I assume can be written about enough to make an article... just link to TrueType as it naturally would in the text. JoeHenzi 11:03, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Definitely. There should be a separate article on FreeType. Feel free to write it :-) — David Remahl 13:09, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok, if and when I get a chance to write it can someone tell me how to start a new article if it already is redirected to TrueType? JoeHenzi 10:10, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Viewing the TrueType article, click "What links here" and then click the "Free Type" link (or whatever redirect article you want to replace). You'll be taken to a page saying "Free Type" at the top and then the article text actually says "#redirect TrueType", and you can click "edit this page", nuke the redirect, and write a new article. Tempshill 16:57, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"mathematically inferior"?

What does it mean to say that one kind of curve is "mathematically inferior" to another? Uucp 17:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the person who added that had it in mind that with quadratic beziers (used in the Truetype format), specifying the locations of a curve segment's two endpoints, along with the corresponding curve tangent angles at each endpoint, completely determines the shape of the curve. It's mathematically impossible to change the shape of such a quadratic bezier between the endpoints without changing the location and/or tangent angles of the endpoints. So in a great number of cases, the only way to change the shape of an outline specified in terms of quadratic beziers is to recut it (using different endpoints for one or more curve segments), and this may have a further chain-reaction effect on neighboring quadratic curve segments (the dreaded non-locality problem when attempting to edit Truetype fonts in native format). That's why the majority of font editors actually use cubic beziers for editing purposes, and only convert the cubic beziers to quadratic beziers at the last moment when writing out the Truetype font file.

Cubic beziers are convenient in fonts because if a curve segment has two specified endpoints, and a specified tangent angle at each endpoint, you can still have some control over the shape of the curve between the endpoints without changing the endpoint data. So cubic beziers don't manifest the same non-locality problem when editing font glyph outlines... AnonMoos (talk) 02:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. See section 1.21 "Drawing Truetype Directly" on page 35 of Fontographer: Type by Design by Stephen Moye ISBN 1-55828-447-8 for the same point (with less mathematics)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:04, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Hinting on Mac vs on Windows?

I seem to remember having read somewhere, a long time ago, that the TrueType hinting language is somewhat different between Mac and Windows fonts, and that, for this reason, hinted fonts of one system will be displayed as if they were unhinted or badly hinted on the other. Please add information on whether this is true at all, and if so, if there are ways to convert between the two hinting languages. Thanks! -- 10:40, 6 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.229.232.212 (talk)

Format specifications?

Many pages for image formats have specifications on the format down to the very last byte (BMP for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format). Resources like these are things developers (like me) find extremely invaluable.

So far my attempts to find information on this elsewhere have been in vain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.237.209.214 (talk) 19:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

TTF font editors

"The primary strength of TrueType was originally that it offered font developers a high degree of control over precisely how their fonts are displayed, right down to particular pixels, at various font sizes. With widely varying rendering technologies in use today, pixel-level control is no longer certain in a TrueType font."

I used to have a program that allowed me to use bitmap images as glyphs in ttf files, I tried finding it again and found only a headache full of vector and curve shape outliners. I WANT PIXEL CONTROL sheesh.

I need a basic free ttf pixel editor. a link would be helpful.27.16.112.100 (talk) 05:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

What that quote is telling you is that with the diversity of screen technologies, rendering algorithms (e.g. Subpixel rendering), software, and systems which make use of TrueType these days, your carefully hand-crafted bitmaps might end up being ignored most of the time. For better or worse, TrueType and TrueType rendering is much less of a closed system than in the Windows 3.1 days, and TrueType is basically a vector format... AnonMoos (talk) 15:48, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

TTE format and Editor

The mentioned ".tte (for EUDC usage) for Microsoft Windows" are not explained at all and should be shortly explained. tte is a storage format of Microsoft for usage with the program eudcedit.exe in windows\system32 which is called "Private Character Editor". A link to another page about this program could be included, the corresponding microsoft page is Primary the TTE file should be explained at least concerning the general function, perhaps also the usage and the internal format. The default storage location is C:\Windows\Fonts\EUDC.TTE Info has been found on these pages: David Bruchmann (talk) 16:41, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Digital typography

There is a discussion at Talk:Typography#"Digital typography" that may interest editors. The present redirect target of Digital typography is being debated. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:57, 24 March 2021 (UTC)