TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 05:01:20 EDT 2024
FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE
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OpenType software | ||
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SWITCH TO INDEX FILE
Adam Twardoch
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Free in-house tools from Adobe (for Mac OSX, older Mac OS, and Windows, but not UNIX) for wrapping a PostScript type 1 font into an OpenType/CFF font. Direct download. Quoted from the site: The goal of the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType package is to share the tools used by Adobe font developers for wrapping up PostScript fonts as OpenType/CFF font files, and adding OpenType layout features. These tools are used for in-house development of new Adobe OpenType fonts. Use them at your own risk, and with no guarantee of support! We know that they work for the fonts Adobe makes, but have tested only part of what it is possible to express with OpenType. Note! Although the FDK directory tree contains a number of Python scripts, none of them can be used by double-clicking on them; they can only be successfully called as commands from a command-line window (the "Terminal" program on Mac, the "cmd" or "DOS" program on Windows). Note also that the AFDKO is for adding OpenType data to existing fully-designed PostScript fonts, and for proofing them. It does not offer tools for designing or editing glyphs. The proofing tools work with TrueType-based source fonts, but the makeotf, checkOutlines, and autohint tools work only with PostScript source fonts or OpenType fonts with Postscript outlines. Thomas Phinney compares it with the free TTX tool, and says this: Currently, if I want a simple and accurate representation of the contents of a TrueType or OpenType font, and possibly to edit the info, I have been using the wondrous open source TTX tool, which is based on the FontTools library. This dumps the font info to an XML text file, which can be viewed/edited in any text editor or anything that can handle XML. It can also recompile the text file back into a font. (In fairness, Adobe's FDK for OpenType also has table dumping/recompiling tools, just not quite as slick as TTX. Even Adobe folks often use TTX.) Mac download file. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
A free Windows Opentype converter by Adobe Systems written in 1999. You can use this utility to convert PostScript fonts to OpenType fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Adobe: OpenType-SVG is a font format in which an OpenType font has all or just some of its glyphs represented as SVG (scalable vector graphics) artwork. This allows the display of multiple colors and gradients in a single glyph. Because of these features, we also refer to OpenType-SVG fonts as color fonts. OpenType-SVG fonts allow text to be shown with these graphic qualities, while still allowing it to be edited, indexed, or searched. They may also contain OpenType features that allow glyph substitution or alternate glyph styles. Color fonts like Trajan Color Concept and EmojiOne Color will appear just like typical fonts in your programs' font menus but they may not display their full potential, since many programs don't yet have full support for the color components. If your software program doesn't support the SVG artwork within the fonts, glyphs will fall back to a solid black style. Color can still be applied to this fallback style, as it will work like a typical OpenType font. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Adobe OT fonts in Latex
| John Owens (UC Davis) explains how to install Adobe OpenType fonts for use with Latex. He bases himself on Marc Penninga's fontools and on Eddie Kohler's LCDF type tools, both free. He has developed the otfinst package: otfinst takes a list of OpenType font files as input, uses Eddie Kohler's otftotfm to install them into a TeX/LaTeX system, and builds and installs the necessary font description and style files. Otfinst was formerly known as otftex_install and is written in Python. It has similar capabilities to Marc Penninga's fontools. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Adobe's OTF conversions
| Christopher Slye was involved in the creation of the Adobe OTF library. He writes: The licensed (non-Adobe) OpenType fonts in the Adobe Type Library are all produced from the Type 1 versions which preceded them. If you look at a pre-OpenType catalog of the ATL, you'll see that whatever was or wasn't present there is the same for the OpenType versions. Of course we took all the supplemental fonts we had and combined them into a single OTF and made the alternates accessible through layout features as best we could. It was, essentially, a conversion project. So yes, the OpenType versions of these fonts were not expanded, but neither were they reduced or limited. Licensing issues aside, I assure you we had our hands full expanding the Adobe Originals. As for why the various expert glyphs (oldstyle figures, smallcaps) weren't available in the first place, that is probably a licensing issue in most cases, and such things are not trivial. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType. Other links: typophile.com/afdko, adobe.com/afdko, thomasphinney.com/afdko. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Akihiko Morisawa
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He contributed to the GNU Freefont project via FreeSerif Cyrillic, and some of the Greek symbols. He also provided valuable direction about Cyrillic and Greek typesetting. Kernest link. Fontspace link. Another URL. Google Plus link. Abstract Fonts link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Graphic designer who has worked at the McGill Daily in Montreal (1997-1999) and at SUNY (New Paltz, NY, 2003-2004), where she obtained an MFA in Intermedia Design in 2005. She wrote a thesis in which features of OpenType are used to replace bad words with good ones. From 2006 until 2009, Amy was an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Currently, Amy is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Foundation at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She is one of the cofounders of Alphabettes. Flash demo which does not work on several browsers. Scribbly handwriting fonts (no downloads) include Sugar and Spice, Shy Slacker, Francophile and Cranky Kid. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Andrey V. Panov
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Designer with Rajesh Pradhan of a GNU license (free) OpenType Oriya font, Utkal (2003), which can be downloaded here and here. See also here, where it is given as part of the Rebati Open Source Project for computing in Oriya. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Applied Symbols
| Applied Symbols, founded by Selwyn Hollis, specializes in custom fonts and graphics for Mathematica. It created OpenType versions of Knuth's Computer Modern fonts. [Considering that the PostScript versions of these fonts by BlueSky are free, I have a problem with Applied Symbols actually selling them.] Another font sold here is UniMath: "This OpenType font contains over a thousand glyphs, including math-italic Roman and Greek alphabets, upper-case blackboard bold, calligraphic, and Euler script, and hundreds of technical and mathematical symbols." In an earlier web life (as Faux Tex Fonts), Selwyn was selling a Mac package with these truetype fonts: Symbolic, MathMode, and KahoeTech. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ |
ATypI 2006 Type Tech presentations in PDF format by Thomas Phinney (Adobe) and some others. More specifically:
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Free Bengali truetype and Opentype fonts: HortukiNormal, JamrulNormal, LikhanNormal, muktinarrow, SantipurOT. The first three are by Deepayan Sarkar. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Betatype
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While at Brigham Young University, he designed Alexandre (2004, a roman influenced by blackletter), Blackletter No.36, Uncial New (2004, an uncial with a unicase feel), Aloe (2003), Betatype No. 28 (2003, a semiserif), Ulysses (2003), Pill Aberration, Raisin Nut, Pill Gothic (2001, a sans family published in 2004 at Umbrella Type/Veer), Beezer Sans, Uncial Slab, Sketch No. 26, Sketch No. 25, Dear Sarah (2004, a contextual handwriting typeface done with great care, available from Umbrella Type), and Factory. Betatype published these fonts:
Google Plus link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ |
Designers in 2004 of a free unicode-compliant Gurmukhi OpenType font, Saab. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Bill Troop on the weaknesses of OpenType, on engineers and companies versus designers. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
cfftot1
| Eddie Kohler's free type utility which translates a Compact Font Format (CFF) font, or a PostScript-flavored OpenType font, into PostScript Type 1 format. It correctly handles subroutines and hints. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Chris Simpkins
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Christian Robertson
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Christina Schultz works as a freelance designer in London and Berlin. Her current focus is on iconography and intelligent fonts. Recent projects include logo, corporate and web design. She graduated from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design with an MA in Communication Design in January 2005. At ATypI 2005 in Helsinki, she spoke about Piclig (for picture ligature), an intelligent OpenType font, which makes it possible to create symbols out of letters. These letters, when typed in a specific order, merge automatically and form picture ligatures. To achieve this replacement, piclig uses OpenType's contextual character substitution. The font contains a library of 112 symbols which are encoded not as images, but as characters. Piclig occupies little disk space, which is important in applications such as mobile phones. FF PicLig (2005, Fontshop). FF Piclig won an award at TDC2 2006. FontShop link. Klingspor link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Christopher Slye
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CM Unicode
| Free font package from 2009 by Andrey Panov, specially adapted for TeX. CM Unicode (or: Computer Modern Unicode) is an OpenType and Type 1 unicode version of Knuth's Computer Modern font family. The OIpenType fonts include CMUBright-Bold, CMUSerif-BoldItalic, CMUSerif-BoldSlanted, CMUBright-Oblique, CMUBright-Roman, CMUBright-SemiBoldOblique, CMUBright-SemiBold, CMUTypewriter-Light, CMUTypewriter-LightOblique, CMUSerif-Bold, CMUBright-BoldOblique, CMUClassicalSerif-Italic, CMUTypewriter-Italic, CMUConcrete-BoldItalic, CMUConcrete-Bold, CMUConcrete-Roman, CMUConcrete-Italic, CMUSerif-BoldNonextended, CMUSerif-Roman, CMUSansSerif-Oblique, CMUSerif-RomanSlanted, CMUSansSerif-BoldOblique, CMUSansSerif, CMUSansSerif-DemiCondensed, CMUTypewriter-Oblique, CMUSansSerif-Bold, CMUTypewriter-Bold, CMUSerif-Italic, CMUTypewriter-Regular, CMUTypewriter-BoldItalic, CMUSerif-UprightItalic, CMUTypewriterVariable-Italic, CMUTypewriterVariable. Alternate download site. Google Plus link. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Free OpenType fonts at this religious educational institutions in Minnesota: AGaramondPro-Bold, AGaramondPro-BoldItalic, AGaramondPro-Italic, AGaramondPro-Regular, AGaramondPro-Semibold, AGaramondPro-SemiboldItalic, HelveticaNeueLTStd-Bd, HelveticaNeueLTStd-BdIt, HelveticaNeueLTStd-Blk, HelveticaNeueLTStd-BlkIt, HelveticaNeueLTStd-It, HelveticaNeueLTStd-Roman, HelveticaNeueLTStd-Th, HelveticaNeueLTStd-ThIt, HelveticaNeueLTStd-UltLt, HelveticaNeueLTStd-UltLtIt, TrajanPro-Bold, TrajanPro-Regular. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Adobe Technical Note 5176 for the use of PostScript data in OpenType fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Comparing TTX, OTFDK, DTL OTMaster and FontLab Studio 5
| Thomas Phinney compares small font editing tasks in truetype and opentype fonts, and looks at four options: TTX (free), Adobe's OT FDK (free, admittedly less handy than TTX in his own words), DTL OTMaster (commercial and similar to TTX) and FontLab Studio 5. Excerpts from his blog: Currently, if I want a simple and accurate representation of the contents of a TrueType or OpenType font, and possibly to edit the info, I have been using the wondrous open source TTX tool, which is based on the FontTools library. This dumps the font info to an XML text file, which can be viewed/edited in any text editor or anything that can handle XML. It can also recompile the text file back into a font. (In fairness, Adobe's FDK for OpenType also has table dumping/recompiling tools, just not quite as slick as TTX. Even Adobe folks often use TTX.) [...] The downside to tools like TTX and OTMaster is that they make little effort to tell you the meaning of the various cryptic values for various fields (or the exact meaning of the field itself), even when said values are legal/legit. So you need to also have a copy of the OpenType or TrueType specification handy, and optionally a more descriptive, hand-holding tool like FontLab Studio. [...] FontLab Studio 5 interprets the OpenType font into its own internal format. It can't open a font, make a tiny change and re-save it as a font without potentially changing other things. To give a really concrete example, FLS displays font embedding settings in terms of its interpretation of the settings, rather than the actual bits. TTX or OTMaster are really handy for that, because they show the unvarnished truth of what's in the font, without interpretation. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Basic OpenType GSUB and GPOS layout engine. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Contextual OpenType features
| In 2003-2004, Adam Twardoch worked on the contextual OpenType features in Zapfino Extra and talked about it at TypoTechnica 2005 in London. Zapfino Extra has 1677 glyphs, and makes good use of the calt (contextual alternates) and clig (contextual ligatures) tables. The result is a classroom example of OpenType development. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
A free on-line converter from PFA (type 1) to Opentype format. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Author of Accessing OpenType font features in LATEX. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
David Glenn from the Microsoft type group, explains why there are so few OpenType fonts "out there" (by February 2002):" There are a few main reasons why you don't see a lot more Latin fonts with richer typography using OT. Popular applications (besides InDesign&a few others) don't use OT for Latin text. A lot of apps use it for complex scripts since it the only way to fully support some of these languages. It takes a lot of work to make an application use OT. You have to figure out a good UI to present the OT functionality to users. Also, what do you do about backwards compatibility? Ligatures and other nice features will change line layout. Shipping "pro" versions of all your fonts takes time, money, disk space, etc. Secondly, font makers have invested a lot of money in tools and knowledge to make fonts. OT is a new skillset and format. If users aren't banging down their door, they're not going to put a lot of time and money into it as fast as if apps and users we're screaming for it. Most users--- regardless of OS--- don't really require richer typography to write letters, read email, etc. That's not to say richer typography isn't better or it's the right thing to do, but right now things work for "most" people. These two reasons--- coding apps to expose OT to users and font makers learning the art--- are the two main reasons why OT isn't prevalent. If the operating systems and applications supported (used) OT starting a few years ago I'm sure you would see a lot more OT fonts out there by now. MS shipped Palatino Linotype with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Palatino Linotype is fully OpenType, with ~1200 glyphs. This is in addition to our many complex script typefaces we've shipped to enable and support many languages. Microsoft is working on delivering more OpenType via fonts, apps and technologies with each release we do. I'm sure Apple and Adobe are working on these issues as well. " [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Eccentrifuge
| The Eccentrifuge Blackletter Directory aims to be an exhaustive online reference for all commercially available blackletter fonts (but he only deals with commercial type). Run by John Butler of North Carolina (he was in Atlanta, GA). John Butler designed the Butler Antiqua family (2002) in the style of Ruzicka and Dwiggins. Eccentrifuge assists type designers in navigating and managing the complexity of OpenType feature programming, Euro conversion, character encoding and Unicode, Python scripting, bitmap embedding, and to a certain extent, internationalization. It also specializes in developing connected OpenType font designs at a level of fluidity previously unavailable, allowing your designs to achieve a true handwritten look. Jobs include Emigre's Mrs. Eaves OpenType, an OpenType version of Erik Van Blokland's Kosmik, and Barchowsky Fluent Hand OpenType. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Eddie Kohler
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Eddie Kohler
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Eddie Kohler
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Eddie Kohler
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Eddie Kohler
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Edward G.J. Lee
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Software company of Michael Jansson, located in Bromma, near Stockholm. Font software specialists, who have worked on an Adobe type 1 to truetype converter (as a built-in part of Windows NT, and a separate product called Janus), and are working with Microsoft on OpenType tools. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Ernst Tremel s based in Muenster, Germany. He designed a Devanagari font called ShiDeva that includes a "volt" table and many ligatures. His pages also cover Tamil, and one can download the ETTamilNew font. He also has a Kurdish font, as well as maps about the Kurds and about Indian languages. About the Kurdish font, he writes: Kurdish AllAlphabets contains 694 glyphs and 529 standard kern pairs: Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic script. There are OpenType tables for Arabic and embedded bitmaps included. He joined the Open Font Library movement. He offers Ahuramazda there, which is an alphabet for the Avestan language: Avestan was an Iranian language in which the earliest Zoroastrian hymns were orally transmitted since 1500 BCE. Due to lingusitic change, fluency in Avestan as spoken a thousand years earlier was deteorating, and hence the need to write the language became increasingly apparent. By the 3rd century CE an alphabet was created to write down the ancient Avestan language. OFL link. Alternate URL. And another URL. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
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FontConverter.Org
| Free on-line font format converter from these formats (as input): TrueType, PostScript (Type 1 font), TeX Bitmap Fonts, OTB (X11 bitmap only sfnt), BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format), FON (Windows), FNT (Windows), OTF OpenType font, SVG, TTC, ABF (Adobe Binary Screen Font), AFM (Adobe Font Metrics File), BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format), DFONT (Mac OS X Data Fork Font). The output is one of these: TTF TrueType, OTF OpenType, FON Generic font, PFB Printer font binary, dfont Mac OS X data fork font. By T. Reinhardt, Switzerland. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
FontForge
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Interview. Wikipedia page on FontForge. FontForge documentation. FontForge history. Footnote: the headline of this page is set in New G8 by Artifex and Michael Sharpe based on URW Garamond No.8, a project developed, like hundreds of others in the open source community, by FontForge. Github link. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Free course offered at Typeworx in Toronto on Saturday, November 16, 2002, 1450 O'Connor Drive, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Other free courses will be given throughout the year. These courses run from 10am to 7pm and cover Fontlab's basic features, maximum coverage of languages, font formats, unicode, OpenType, AAT, a demo on how to make a fully-featured OpenType font, the development of a huge font (Typeworx' Borgia will have over 5000 glyphs). [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
The Fontlab people offer free fonts, such as Caty Handcraft, and LizOT (2003), an OpenType font. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
OpenType vertical metrics reporting and font line spacing adjustment tool. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Fontools
| Package made in 2005 by Marc Penninga that includes these free UNIX tools written in Perl. The package provides tools to simplify using OpenType fonts with LaTeX. It contains:
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FontShop's hype on OpenType. See also here for the analogy with a Swiss army knife. Same presentation on Flickr, all brought by Stephen Coles. The point is well made, namely that one file carries a lot of tools. However, even omitting the fact that font sellers will embrace any new format because it increases sales, the presentation has some (minor) incorrect statements (example: contrary to the text, a PostScript font can hold many more than 256 glyphs) and some major omissions, e.g., at the time of the OpenType design, a much better format could have been invented, and all of the OpenType things are possible in TrueType as well---it was just a renaming of the truetype structure. A technological advance? Hardly. Stephen: a great visual presentation, but a poor subject to hype. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
OpenType font table reporting tool for ttf and otf fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Fonttootf / Fonttosfnt are free utilities for converting bitmap fonts (BDF) to truetype or OpenType format. They are now included in the XFree86 CVS tree. By Juliusz Chroboczek. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
A research article published in 1993 by Luc Devroye at EuroTeX. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Frederik De Bleser
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Freedom of choice for font formats
| In their presentation at ATypI 2013 in Amsterdam, Werner Lemberg (the co-developer of Freetype) and David Lemon (Adobe) compare truetype and type 1 for use in small devices. Their talk sounds quite interesting, and promises a small shake-up in font rendering on small screens. The abstract: The PostScript (CFF) font format, in which most of the world's fonts are developed, is commonly used for all the traditional forms of graphic design, such as books, magazines, newspapers, advertising, posters, logos, packaging, and movie titling. But for the most part it hasn't been used in HTML pages or on mobile devices. Those environments have often done a poor job of displaying the fonts in this format, so designers have been limited to using only TrueType. Because TrueType is harder to develop and produces larger fonts, there are advantages to being able to use CFF as well. Adobe and Google have been working with the developers of FreeType, the open-source font rendering engine used in billions of devices, to improve the font imaging solutions available to browsers and mobile devices. David Lemon and Werner Lemberg will talk about the improvements coming soon to a screen near you, what this means for designers and developers, and also discuss how companies can work together to bring value to type users via open-source offerings. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Fyrisfonts
| Stefan Lundhem started Fyrisfonts. He is the designer of Garajannon (Garamond family), Spartacus (a Roman, CODEX-like lettering font), Beckhem Gothic, Fournament, Primus, Fyris Fraction, Fyris Fraktur, Krabat, Heltime (mix of Times and Helvetica), Terminator, Bessie (2001, multiline art deco typeface modeled after Marcia Loeb's 1972 alphabet, Rainbow), Billie (2001, art deco titling, modeled after Marcia Loeb's 1972 alphabet, Zig Zag), Jämför abc, Miami Blues and Miami Vice (beautiful, now called Bessie and Billie, respectively). The pages in Swedish contain an in-depth study of Jenson and Adobe Jenson MM, Caslon, Cloister Old Style, Fraktur, Garamond, Minion MM, MultipleMaster fonts, Myriad MM, OpenType, Poynter, RailwayType, Newspaper type, Web fonts, Web typography, and screen typography. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
gbdfed
| Freeware pixel font editor for Mac OS X by Mark Leisher. It works natively with BDF fonts, but can import |
George Williams
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George Williams
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GOTE stands for GNOME OpenType editor. Free (beta-version) editor by Robert Brady from the Department of Electronics&Computer Science, University of Southampton. Currently supports truetype only. Requires the gnome libraries and freetype. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Charles Hedrick's free utility (chmap.c) for Windows machines to extract expert sets, small caps, etcetera from Truetype or OpenType fonts and make special Truetype or OpenType fonts for these expert sets, for use with older Windows software. Hedrick is the Director of Computing Services at Rutgers University. Hedrick also discusses the choice of text fonts: Documenta, Aldus, Janson Text, Minion, Warnock. Alternate URL. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
I have always maintained that hinting is unimportant *in the long run*. More and more people are coming on board. Quoting Raph Levien: The importance of hinting is steadily decreasing, and will eventually approach zero. Aside from hinting, the technical differences between OpenType TT and OpenType CFF are also not that significant - the encoding and fancy contextual features are the same across the two, the only real difference is the representation of the outlines. IMNSHO, a reasonable way to deliver fonts for Vista and future systems is to forego hints altogether, and tune the gasp table to enable y-direction grayscaling. See this thread for discussion and examples of the latter, a new feature for ClearType. Btw, I wasn't able to find the documentation for the new gasp flags for controlling y-direction grayscaling. Maybe one of the ClearType experts here can point me in the right direction. Basically, the effect of this approach is that contrast will be slightly softened compared to well-hinted fonts, but youre pretty much guaranteed no distortion or artifacts, and increasing resolution will lessen the importance of contrast over time. Of course, all this depends on the nature of the font. If your goal is good screen rendering of large blocks of text, as it is for MSs new ClearType font collection, then you probably do want to pay attention to the hinting. For display fonts, it shouldn't matter much at all. As far as the expectation for future support, I think both TT and CFF are going to be around a long time. All the new Microsoft stuff (XAML, XPS, WPF, if you can keep track of all the alphabet stew) supports both TT and CFF, and of course anything that deals with PDF has to as well. The code for unhinted TT and CFF rendering is pretty simple. So I would say that the choice between TT and CFF boils down to which tools youre most comfortable using. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Free Indic OpenType fonts have been released under the GNU General Public License:
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James Shimada
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Polish type designer in Grudziadz (Stycznia) involved in the restauration of historical Polish type designs. At GUST.org, he created fonts for Polish such as QuasiHelvetica, QuasiCourier, QuasiChancery, QuasiBookman, Antykwa Półtawskiego (based on work by Adam Półtawskiego (1923-1928), constructed by Bogusław Jackowski, Janusz M. Nowacki and Piotr Strzelczyk), Antykwa Toruńska (1995, based on work by Zygfryd Gardzielewski, electronic version by Janusz M. Nowacki). Alternate URL for the latter face. He runs FOTO ALFA. At the latter page, you can find these fonts in which Nowacki participated: Antykwa Torunska, Antykwa Pótawskiego, Rodzina krojów PL, Rodzina fontów LM (Latin Modern), Quasi Palatino, Quasi Times, Quasi Bookman, Quasi Courier, Quasi Swiss, Quasi Chancery. The Quasi series are Polish versions of standard URW and Ghostscript fonts. The Rodzina series are Polish versions of the Computer Modern families. In 2005, he placed these fonts on CTAN: Kurier and Iwona. Kurier is a two-element sans-serif typeface. It was designed for a diploma in typeface design by Malgorzata Budyta (1975) at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under the supervision of Roman Tomaszewski. The result was presented with other Polish typefaces at the ATypI conference in Warsaw in 1975. Kurier was intended for Linotype typesetting of newspapers and similar periodicals. The design goals included resistance to technological processes destructive to the letter shapes. As a result, amongst others, the typeface distinguishes itself through intra- and extra-letter white spaces as well as ink traps at cross-sections of some elements constituting the characters. The PostScript and OpenType family covers Latin, East-European languages, Cyrillic and Vietnamese. Iwona covers all of these too and is Nowacki's alternative to Kurier. Both sans font families have many useful mathematical symbols as well. In 2006, Nowacki and Jackowski published free extensions of the Ghostscript fonts in their TeX Gyre Project: Adventor, Bonum, Cursor, Heros, Pagella, Termes, Schola, Chorus. In 2008, two styles of Cyklop were published. This was a generalization and extension of a historical type. He writes: The Cyclop typeface was designed in the 1920s at the workshop of Warsaw type foundry "Odlewnia Czcionek J. Idzkowski i S-ka". This sans serif typeface has a highly modulated stroke so it has high typographic contrast. The vertical stems are much heavier then horizontal ones. Most characters have thin rectangles as additional counters giving the unique shape of the characters. The lead types of Cyclop typeface were produced in slanted variant at sizes 8-48 pt. It was heavily used for heads in newspapers and accidents prints. Typesetters used Cyclop in the inter-war period, during the occupation in the w underground press. The typeface was used until the beginnings of the offset print and computer typesetting era. Nowadays it is hard to find the metal types of this typeface. | |
Association that developed some Japanese fonts, such as the Heisei Kaku Gothic, Heisei Maru Gothic and Heisei Mincho families at Adobe. IBM commissioned their own versions of the Heisei family. These IBM versions can be bought and licensed from Ascender Corporation. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
J.M. Berthier
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John Butler
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John Owens
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John Owens describes how to install Adobe OpenType fonts for use with LaTeX. To do so he used the Eddie Kohler's LCDF Typetools and some scripts of his own. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Kamal Mansour, educated in Cairo, used to run Kappa Type in Palo Alto, CA, and was involved in software, fonts and keyboards for some languages. Thereafter, he joined Monotype in 1996 where he is now involved in OpenType implementations for various scripts including Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew. At Monotype, from his base in Los Altos, CA, his responsibilities includes growing the library of non-Latin scripts, investigating potential products, in-house consulting, as well as assisting customers with font specifications. He spoke at ATypI 2005 in Helsinki on Nastaliq style through open type, about which he writes: Designed by Pakistani calligrapher Mirza Jamil, Noori Nastaliq is a calligraphic Urdu script typeface originally devised for use on a Monotype imagesetter in the 1970s. Once this proprietary equipment became obsolete, Noori Nastaliq could not be readily implemented for many years with the digital technology at the time. With the advent and maturation of OpenType technology, Noori Nastaliq is once again alive. In spite of the many graphic complexities of Nastaliq style such as its oblique alignment to the baseline and its cursive connections, OpenType proved sufficient for the task. In 2015, Patrick Giasson and Kamal Mansour co-designed the Arabic script typeface Bustani at Monotype. Bustani is the first OpenType font to offer full classical Naskh contextual shaping. It covers Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. Bustani won an award at TDC 2016. Speaker at TypeCon 2012 in Milwaukee and at ATypI 2015 in Sao Paulo. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Karsten Lücke
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Khaled Hosny
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Designer of Punk Nova (2010), a free OpenType implementation of Don Knuth's Punk font, based on modified Metapost sources by Taco Hoekwater and Hans Hagan, dating from 2008. Hosny writes: Punk is a dynamic font, every time a glyph is requested Matafont draws a unique instance of it. On the other hand, OpenType is static, glyph outlines are drawn once and stored in the font and the renderer can not alter those outlines. To emulate the dynamic nature of Punk, we generate several alternate shapes of each glyph and store them in the font. Alternate shapes are mapped to the base character using OpenType [Randomize] feature (rand), which tells the renderer to select glyphs randomly from the list of alternate shapes. Pick up the free Punk Nova from CTAN or Open Font Library. XITS (2011) is a Times-like typeface for mathematical and scientific publishing, based on STIX fonts. The main mission of XITS is to provide a version of STIX fonts enriched with the OpenType MATH extension, making it suitable for high quality mathematic typesetting with OpenType MATH capable layout systems, like MS Office 2007 and the new TeX engines XeTeX and LuaTeX. This free OFL package was developed by Khaled Hosny. Inside the fonts, we read Copyright (c) 2001-2010 by the STI Pub Companies, consisting of the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Mathematical Society, the American Physical Society, Elsevier, Inc., and The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. Portions copyright (c) 1998-2003 by MicroPress, Inc. Portions copyright (c) 1990 by Elsevier, Inc. Euler OTF (2010) are OpenType Math fonts based on Hermann Zapf's Euler and implemented by Taco Hoekwater, Hans Hagen, and Khaled Hosny. Named Neo-Euler (2009-2010), it covers Latin, Greek and has a full blackletter set of glyphs. Copyright Hosny and the American Mathematical Society. Open Font Library link. In 2010-2011, Hosny developed the free Amiri font (OFL; dedicated web page): Amiri font is an open font revival of the Arabic Naskh typeface designed and first used by Bulaq Press in Cairo (also known as Amiria Press) in the early part of the twentieth century. Amiri's uniqueness comes from its superb balance between the beauty of Naskh calligraphy and the requirements of elegant typography. Amiri is most suitable for running text and book printing. See also CTAN, Google Web Fonts, and at OFL. Dedicated web page. In 2015, he created the free calligraphic Arabic typeface (in Ruqaa style) Aref Ruqaa. The Latin part is based on AMS Euler. Google Fonts link. In 2015, Khaled Hosny and Santiago Orozco cooperated on the Latin / Arabic typeface Reem Kufi. Github link. Khaled, who designed the Arabic part, explains: Reem Kufi is a Fatimid-style decorative Kufic typeface, as seen in the historical mosques of Cairo. It is largely based on the Kufic designs of the late master of Arabic calligraphy, Mohammed Abdul Qadir, who revived this art in the 20th century and formalized its rules. In 2016, Khaled Hosny designed Mada (Google Fonts), a modernist, unmodulated Arabic typeface inspired by road signage seen around Cairo, Egypt. The Latin component is a slightly modified version of Source Sans Pro, led by Paul Hunt at Adobe Type. Khaled Hosny contributed to and maintained the free Libertinus font package between 2012 and 2020. In 2021, Hosny released Qahiri at Google Fonts and Github. Qahiri is a Kufic ypeface based on the modernized and regularized old manuscript Kufic calligraphy style of the late master of Arabic calligraphy, Mohammad Abdul Qadir. Github link. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Khaled Hosny
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KLTF (Karsten Lücke Type Faces)
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Other designs by Karsten include KLTF Tiptoe (2005, a bold and black headline family), and KLTF Grotext (2007, an elliptical family in 7 styles). Co-designer with John Hudson, Alice Savoie and Paul Hanslow of Brill (2011), Brill Greek (2021), Brill Cyrillic (2021) and Brill Latin (2021). This classic text typeface family was a winner at the TDC 2013 competition. Client: Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Great OpenType link and discussion page. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ |
A web app that converts a font from/to ttf, otf, woff and woff2, written by a coder in Tokyo. Github link. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Naqsh is a free OpenType font by Lateef Sagar Shaikh with tons of diacritics for a handwritten Mistral-like character set, as well as a full Arabic character set with appropriate opentype tables for the Nastalique way of writing context-sensitive Arabic. The Latin part was designed by Umar Rashid. The font is compliant with many Unicode tables. See also here and here. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Laurence Penney
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LCDF Type Software
| Eddie Kohler's free type utilities. The LCDF Typetools package contains several command-line programs for manipulating PostScript Type 1 and PostScript-flavored OpenType fonts. It consists of:
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LCDF Typetools
| LCDF stands for Little Cambridgeport Design Factory. LCDF TypeTools is a tremendously useful free software package written and maintained by Eddie Kohler between 1997 and 2019. These programs are available at LCDF:
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LGJ Font Notes
| Taiwanese type designer Edward Lee has some font information pages (in Chinese). He has useful technical discussions on Metafont, OpenType, Truetype and type 1. Downloadable full CJK fonts include cwHBMono (2008, Tsong-Min Wu, Tsong-Huey Wu and Edward G.J. Lee). This archive contains about 30 free full Chinese fonts in the WT, WTS, WP, and WCL series created in 2004 by Taiwanese type designer Edward G. J. Lee. The font names are: HanWangMingMediumChuIn, HanWangKaiMediumChuIn, HanWangMingMediumPoIn1, HanWangKaiMediumPoIn1, HanWangMingMediumPoIn2, HanWangKaiMediumPoIn2, HanWangMingMediumPoIn3, HanWangKaiMediumPoIn3, HanWangMingLight, HanWangMingMedium, HanWangMingBold, HanWangMingHeavy, HanWangMingBlack, HanWangYenLight, HanWangYenHeavy, HanWangHeiLight, HanWangHeiHeavy, HanWangLiSuMedium, HanWangFangSongMedium, HanWangKanDaYan, HanWangKanTan, HanWangZonYi, HanWangYanKai, HanWangShinSuMedium, HanWangCC02, HanWangCC15, HanWangGSolid06cut1, HanWangGB06, HanWang-KaiBold-Gb5, HanWang-WeiBeiMedium-Gb5, HanWang-FangSongMedium-Gb5, HanWang-SinSongThin-Gb5. All fonts are copyright Dr. Hann-Tzong Wang, 2002-2004. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
In a discussion on ligatures, Sii Daniels stated: [..] use InDesign and better fonts (OpenType) where the ligs should get placed automatically for you. The implication that OpenType fonts are somehow supposed to be "better" triggered this reply from me. Fonts are inert objects. Ligatures are placed by applications that use fonts. The only responsibility of a font is to store enough information so that applications can work with ligatures. Type 1 and truetype fonts can both store ligatures. In the AFM files of type 1 fonts, one can store additional information that may help applications with automatic ligature subsitution and placement of ligatures on the page. The famous GPOS and GSUB tables in OpenType can be introduced in truetype fonts as wellthere is nothing that ties these tables umbilically to OpenType. So, how exactly are OpenType fonts better? [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Long S Code
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Announcement that Mac OS X will support Windows TTF format, along with Unicode. My question: why did it take so long to make this decision? [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Polish type designer who, for her diploma thesis in typeface design at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under the supervision of Roman Tomaszewski, created Kurier (1975). In 2005, Janusz Marian Nowacki digitized the Kurier family, and added an alternative family, Iwona. Kurier was intended for Linotype typesetting of newspapers and similar periodicals. The design goals included resistance to technological processes destructive to the letter shapes. As a result, amongst others, the typeface distinguishes itself through intra- and extra-letter white spaces as well as ink traps at cross-sections of some elements constituting the characters. The PostScript and OpenType family covers Latin, East-European languages, Cyrillic and Vietnamese. Also, both sans families cover the most frequently used mathematical symbols. All type families are freely available from the CTAN archive. Alternate URL. Klingspor link. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Marc Penninga
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Mark Leisher
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Masahiko Kozuka began making type in 1952. At that time, he had started working at the Mainichi newspaper, one of the leading nationwide daily newspapers in Japan, where he made hot metal text and headline typefaces. He worked at Mainichi from 1950 until his retirement in 1984. In the 1970s, in the transition from hot metal to digital type, he redesigned many fonts of Mainichi's newspaper typefaces. From 1984 to 1992, as type design director for Morisawa&Company, he supervised many type development projects such as the popular ShinGo typeface family, which is the main typeface in use in Japan today. From 1992 to 2001, he supervised the Adobe Originals Japanese typeface development, and designed the Kozuka Mincho and Kozuka Gothic typeface families. He served as a part-time lecturer at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music from 1979 to 1997. Download these OpenType fonts for free: KozGoPro-Medium, KozMinProVI-Regular, developed from 1997-2004. In 2009, the 15,713-glyph Kozuka Gothic Pro was published. see here. Typedia link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Matthew Skala
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Morisawa
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Since 2003, many of their kanji fonts are also available in OpenType format. These include A-OTF-GothicMB101Pro-Bold, A-OTF-GothicMB101Pro-Heavy, A-OTF-GothicMB101Pro-Ultra, A-OTF-Jun201Pro-Regular, A-OTF-Jun34Pro-Medium, A-OTF-Jun501Pro-Bold, A-OTF-KyokaICAPro-Light, A-OTF-KyokaICAPro-Medium, A-OTF-KyokaICAPro-Regular, A-OTF-RyuminPro-Bold, A-OTF-RyuminPro-Heavy, A-OTF-RyuminPro-Medium, A-OTF-RyuminPro-Regular, A-OTF-RyuminPro-Ultra, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Bold, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Heavy, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Light, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Medium, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Regular, A-OTF-ShinGoPro-Ultra, A-OTF-ShinseiKaiPro-CBSK1. The PostScript collection includes these families: Ryumin, ShinGo, FutoMinA101, MidashiMinMA31, GothicMediumBBB, ShinMaruGo, GothicMB101, MidashiGoMB31, FutoGoB101, KaishoMCBK1, ShinseiKaishoCBSK1, KyokashoICA, Kanteiryu, Folk, Takahand, Jun, MainichiShinbumGothic, MainichiShinbunMincho. The font library: Symbols, A1 Mincho, Akashi, Folk Pro, Futo Go B101 Pro, Futo Min A101 Pro, Gothic BBB Pr5, Gothic BBB Pro, Gothic MB101 Pr5, Gothic MB101 Pro, Harucraft, Haruhi Gakuen, Jomin, Jun Pro, Kaisho MCBK1, Kakumin Pro, Kanteiryu, Kocho, Kumoya, Kyoukasho ICA Pro, Likurei, MainichiNewspapersG Pro, MainichiNewspapersM Pro, Maru Folk Pro, Midashi Go MB31 Pro, Midashi Min MA31 Pro, Musashino, Nachin, Outai Kaisho, Pretty Momo, Reisho 101, Ryumin Pr5, Ryumin Pro, Sei Kaisho CB1, Shin Go Min, Shin Go Pr5, Shin Go Pr6, Shin Go Pro, Shin Maru Go Pro, Shinsei Kaisho Pro, Shuei Min Pro, TakaHand, Take Std, UD Reimin Pro. Alternate URL. Associated firms: Morisawa Bunken Inc., MTOP Co., Ltd., LIM Co., Ltd., Morisawa USA Inc., Morisawa Taiwan Inc., Morisawa Korea Inc.. Partner companies: Adobe Systems Inc. (USA), Arphic Technology Co., Ltd. (Taiwan), Sandoll Communication Inc. (Korea), The Font Bureau, Inc. (USA), Beijing Hanyi Keyin Information Technology Co., Ltd. (China). Akihiko Morisawa was a guest speaker at ATypI 2019 in Tokyo. Google Fonts link [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Nick Shinn
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Free on-line font converter (truetype, dfont, opentype). I checked this out, and have to warn people not to use it---it does not preserve several tables. Most importantly, the "name" table is lost in the conversion. Furthermore, this may be a way of grabbing your font. One should do these delicate tasks with trusted software on one's own computer. Nevertheless, if you insist, here are the formats between which it converts: .dfont .eot .otf .pfb .tfm .pfm .suit .svg .ttf .pfa .bin .pt3 .ps .t42 .cff .afm .ttc and .woff. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Playground for Open Type experiments with CSS. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Ulrich Stiehl's authoritative in-depth discussion (in PDF file format) of how word processors cope with OpenType and Unicode (most don't, or are abysmal). Adobe InDesign appears unscathed, while most Windows apps fail the test. [Personal note: Ulrich did not include a comparison with TeX/UNIX, a combination that has easily handled all the OpenType features since the early 80s.] [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
The type group at Adobe, including David Lemon and Thomas Phinney. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
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Send mail with the text: subscribe opentype [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Syntax highlighting and snippets for OpenType feature development in TextMate/Sublime Text. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Documentation and other info about advanced font features [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
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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. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
An introduction to OpenType written by Laurence Penney and Adam Twardoch. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Clive Bruton's report on the OpenType Jamboree held in Redmond, early 2000. Summary: "My viewpoint however is that OpenType, at least in Roman usage, is destined to occupy the same hinterland as GX. It is out there, but we don’t need it. " [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
I have predicted the collective frustration of type designers with any type format that would demand too much technical input. One such format is OpenType, with its numerous tables that have to be adjusted. This effort turns off the true artists, the letter painters. A type designer friend, who will remain anonymous, wrote: I get the impression that OpenType has just begun troubling the type design world -- when Windows Vista and XPress will be published. Especially Windows seems to implement certain OT features differently than Adobe applications do, which means that Adobe will have to change their applications too, and font developers will have to update their fonts again. [...] I could imagine doing other things than keeping up with ever new developments which, unfortunately, don't improve anything. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Code by some typophiles for cycling through alternates for certain glyphs in opentype. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Partially discussed here by John Butler, the Randomize feature in Opentype allows a cyclic substitution of glyphs by other ones, for example, to create the feel of randomness if each glyph has several slighty different implementations. This principle dates from the late 80s, when Signature Software first tried it in its handwritten font software. Those were type 3 fonts where such things were easy to do. Of course, "randomize" is not the right word. As of early 2006, no major software supports OpenType's "randomize" feature, but John Butler managed to get around it using the Contextual Alternates feature. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
By yours truly, dated 2002. I can't take the corporate manipulations and halftruths any longer. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
The OpenType Sanitiser (OTS) parses and serialises OpenType files (OTF, TTF) and WOFF and WOFF2 font files, validating them and sanitizing them. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Check the OpenType specs at this Microsoft site. Also has the truetype and truetype open specs. See also here. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
At Microsoft. See also here. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
A simple API over OpenType.js for Clojure. Runs on the JVM. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Convert Text from OpenType font to three.js 3D. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
OpenType.js
| Opentype.js is a JavaScript parser and writer for TrueType and OpenType fonts. Github link. OpenType.js is written and maintained by Frederik De Bleser. It contains a handy on-line glyph inspector. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Documentation for Monotype's OpenType Layout Source File Format. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
On comp.fonts, Marek Williams offered this opinion on Opentype on January 31, 2002: "Yes, I am aware of the fact that the OpenType specification is free for anyone to use. But in spite of the fact that it has been available for over two years, not one single text font has been released by any foundry other than Adobe. It's a de facto monopoly. FontLab is the first with a price tag within the reach of ordinary folks, but there have been OpenType tools for some time and the major foundries could easily have been using them to create OpenType fonts. There are some non-Adobe OpenType fonts that have been released, but almost all of them are Arabic or Japanese. I understand that OpenType is a major advance for Arabic, where characters change according to the surrounding characters--- sort of like what English would be if we had several dozen ligature combinations and they were mandatory. This makes it not surprising that Arabic fonts would be made available quickly in OpenType format." [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
A discussion on Typophiles regarding Adobe's discontinuation of MM (multiple master type 1 format), and its sales pitch for OpenType. In general, the type designers liked the optical scaling possibilities of MM. They are not so hot on OT in this regard. Michael Schlierbach's testimony there: "When I began using type, I started with MM. It's wonderful how you can work with optical scaling. I cannot understand why that technology has been given up. Optical scaling on OT, even the Adobe Opticals aren't nearly as fine. I would wish very much, to have a technology that makes it able to use fonts that have their own optical specifics over 6 or 8 sizes (or more) like in ancient lead-type, combined with the ease of working with a computer and for example InDesign, that does it automatically. So a good quality of type could return. With MM that was possible (a good worked font provided of course). Some (or most?) optical axes had non-linear scaling measures, and so a very fine adjusting to optical issues was possible. The few "opticals" of OT-Fonts are far away of that skill. I would wish that these possibilities would come back." James Montalbano reports: "MM as a font development tool is a big part of our work flow. I'm holding on to Illustrator 10 since the new CS does not contain any MM controls. So I hope so long as AI10 works, I'll have MMs." [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
OT1 Font Manager
| OpenType, TrueType and Type 1 font manager for Windows, by J.M. Berthier. Thirty day free download. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
OTEdit is a free opentype font editor for Windows and Mac. Page in Japanese. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
OpenType (or: OTF) comes essentially in two formats: the truetype kind (the font is truetype inside) and the type 1 kind (font is type 1 inside). For most fonts, OTF is just any old font with some wrapping paper around it to make the font less open. One can create truetype and/or type 1 fonts from OpenType fonts using many of today's font editors. I like pfaedit (now FontForge), George Williams' free and sturdy work horse for UNIX/LINUX and MacOS X. For example, I learned that Chaparral is of the "type 1 wrapper" kind. There are about 650 glyphs in that font, more than any type 1 font can actively hold, so when exporting in "type 1" format, while all 650 glyphs are created, only those numbered up to 256 in the encoding vector can actually be accessed. How do you get the other ones? I guess, you will need to replace the encoding vector by two other ones, one for the small caps, say, and one for ornaments. The names of all the glyphs can be obtained either from the AFM file (generated by pfaedit) or from the output of t1disasm (a free type 1 disassembler). It should be noted that the generated font is a perfect high quality type 1 font, with all hinting preserved, all kerning pairs present in the AFM, and even the "flex and hint replacement code", typical of many Adobe fonts, inside. Nothing is lost. The Chaparral OTF font was created by Adobe using a program they internally call "makeotf": Adobe has a type 1 to OTF program. Childish of them not to put their type 1 originals and their conversion programs on the market. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Optimized OpenType builder and inspector. Parses and writes SFNT structures. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
otfinfo
| Eddie Kohler's free type utility which reports information about OpenType fonts, such as the features they support and the contents of their 'size' optical size features. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
otftotfm
| Eddie Kohler's free type utility which creates TeX font metrics and encodings that correspond to a Truetype or OpenType font. It will interpret glyph positionings, substitutions, and ligatures as far as it is able. You can say which OpenType features should be activated. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Panorama de polices OpenType
| Thomas Linard's list of available OpenType fonts, with some discussion (in French). [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Fast, practical GPU rasterizer for OpenType fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Freeze some OpenType features into a font. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Richard Howard explains on how to get free OpenType fonts: " I recently found a font that I really like (daVinci) and am quite prepared to pay some money for it. Knowing absolutely nothing about the different font issues (I'm not overly into typography), I went onto Microsoft's page after hearing about the new OpenType stuff. Fair enough, useful info - then link to a page using and 'Embedded open type Font' - the same font that I wanted to buy! To cut a long story short, using IE 5.5, I saved a complete image of the website onto the hard drive, copied the 'eot' file from Microsoft's site by working out the path, and voila! - I had my very own Font generator - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 itself ! Just a case of slipping into Notepad and setting out the text I needed to make my images. My question to Microsoft is - how can these people that spend MANY hours crafting fonts be let down by such LAPSE security holes??? After all, this technology WAS meant to be secure. I'd managed to generate the stuff I needed in about 5 minutes from first loading up the page. I will buy the font anyway to support the author, but this isn't the point. If I can do it, I'm sure a spotty 15 year old kid can." [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
This Dutchman at the University of Leiden wrote open source code for the following tools:
Abstract Fonts link. Fontspace link. Klingspor link. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Create OpenType-SVG color fonts from a set of SVG source files. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
German page explaining how truetype and type 1 are getting married in OpenType. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Selwyn Hollis
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Designer in Denmark of a free OpenType font with partial Unicode support: Summersby (2003). Current language support: Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, plus a few others. Alternate URL. He is working on a serif typeface called Random (2004). [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Designer of Chessmaster (2005), a free OpenType chess font. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Convert TTF or OTF to WOFF, support Node.js and Browsers. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Implementation of advanced typographic tables of OpenType specification. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
showttf
| Free Truetype font utility by George Williams, a truetype to ascii and opentype (.otf) to ascii converter. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
SING is an Adobe proposal format for font files that contain glyphlets, single characters that are not in given fonts (also called supplemental characters or gaiji by Adobe), so that they can be used as if they were incorporated in an existing font. For example, this is a useful thing to have for many oriental languages. It can only work, of course, if the application recognizes it. Since 2004, the Japanese version of InDesign does. Jim DeLaHunt of Adobe explains the format: A glyphlet is like a very small OpenType font that contains one glyph. It contains the glyph outline data for one glyph (plus a one or two alternate glyphs for different writing directions, if appropriate). This outline data is in the TrueType or CFF formats supported by OpenType. The glyphlet also contains meta-information, data that describes the character and glyph properties of the glyphlet. It omits several OpenType tables, so that an OpenType system will not accidentally interpret a glyphlet as an OpenType font. The glyphlet is typically 1 to 2k in size and is supposed to travel with a document in which it is used. Glyphlets are either bought or made in editors, and are then managed by a Glyphlet Management Tool. Glyphlets can also be described in XML, and there is a one-to-one correspondence with the binary format. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Source Foundry
| Chris Simpkins (Source Foundry, Baltimore, MD) wrote these free font tools:
In addition, Chris designed the free programming font Hack (2018). Github link. Use Modify link. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Stefan Lundhem
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This Prague-based outfit converted 1600+ fonts of the URW collection to OpenType. One free complete font, Barbedor. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Free Tamil OpenType fonts have been released under the GNU General Public License:
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Font family for testing OpenType implementations. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Textism on OpenType versus type 1 in 2003 [site now defunct]: After years of stupid adherence to the stupid Postscript Type 1 stupid font format – in which a type designer's work is made marginally more useful than it would be if it where chiselled onto the arms of a manual typewriter, so long as the person using the typewriter worked only in North American english (elsewise, you understand, other typewriters would need to be purchased) and is subject to the letterspacing whims and lively mangling gewgaws central to programs like Quark Xpress – a new standard emerged some time ago, called Opentype; it features almost unlimited character sets and adheres to a universal character-encoding standard, it allows for sophisticated spacing and metrics, and type families are available as single binary files that work the same on Windows and Macintosh computers. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
The Font Wars
| A wonderful article written in 2006 by James Shimada that tells the story of PostScript, parametric fonts, TrueType and OpenType. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Great article by Freddy Nader about the pros and cons of OpenType. Thomas Phinney (Adobe) disagrees, but in the same newsgroup. Gerald Giampa concurs: "Personally I do not believe Jim Rimmer will participate in Open Type. Open Type will be the Great Typographical White Elephant. The singular good feature about Open Type is "cross platform". Titch tich! There is more important aspects of typography than adding idiotic symbols and even longer kerning tables. Your typographical time should be spent making a beautiful font. If you have any additional time go boating. They are asking instead that you become a data entry clerk. As for the rest, auto ugly symbols are fine with me. I don't use them, but be my guest. As if I am going to spend time making beautiful pie signs. Or Greek, I know nothing of Greek. What, I am going to design them a typeface? think again! I am just not that arrogant. Who's fooling who. Frankly accents are bad enough. All these languages with their accents. At least in English we don't use accents as a crutch. I'm surrounded. I better shut up about the accents. Better cancel my vacation to Greece for that matter. The Open Type format lost me when it was decided that optical scaling was of no particular importance. One suggestion was real nifty. Make a font for every size. Ask our friend who made Founder's Caslon what he thinks of that idea? Maybe we can give him our libraries and have him do it for free. A gazillion fonts does "not" make a solution. User hostility?" [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Introduction to OpenType features for type designers. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
The Terrible Secret of OpenType Glyph Substitution
| A very informative article by Matthew Skala about opentype glyph substitutions. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
Thierry Bouche's opinion on the future of OpenType. As posted on June 18, 2001 on alt.binaries.fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Thomas Linard is a specialist on OpenType, Unicode and internationalization. He is based in Strasbourg, France. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Thomas Linard
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Thomas Phinney
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Tobias Reinhardt
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Belgian graphic designer and software specialist who is assiocated with the Sint Lucas Hogeschool voor Beeldende Kunsten in Antwerp, Belgium. He designed various experimental types at these workshops. On his web site, you can find the (free) Panda truetype font made by his associate, Tom Van Iersel. He also made Pixie, a handwriting OpenType typeface (2004) that looks different each time. Speaker at the ATypI meetings in 2004 and 2005 in Prague and Helsinki. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
TrueType developer tools at Microsoft, such as TTFDUMP, TTOASM (TT Open assembler), TTODasm (TrueType Open Disassembler), Flint, SBIT32 (embits bitmap data in a truetype font file), CacheTT, Fastfont. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Truetype, PostScript Type 1&OpenType
| Comparison of formats by Thomas Phinney, February 2001. Older version (October 1997). [Google] [More] ⦿ |
TrueType, PostScript Type 1,&OpenType: What's the Difference? is the title of a comparative article by Thomas W. Phinney, written in 2002. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Discussion at Typophile in December 2005 regarding which font format will survive. Some say PostScript (type 1) will be around for a long time as many print shops are still using it. Truetype is preferred for applications on screen, it seems. There is agreement that Truetype outlines are harder to get right. But no one mentioned the fact that we should have a different font model altogether--one based on many inking paradigms including drawing and image-based formats, in which all data can be altered in ordinary text editors. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
"TrueType Open Assembler Two DOS utilities, TrueType Open Assembler (TTOAsm) and TrueType Open Disassembler (TTODasm), work together to aid in the creation, modification, and verification of TrueType Open (TTO) tables. TTOAsm accepts TrueType Open table data in text format and then assembles that data into a binary TrueType Open table file." [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Adobe Technical Note 5177 for the use of PostScript data in OpenType fonts. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Opentype discussion on Typophile. A quote from Hrant Papazian: "But business is business, and the reality is that the same identical font with no extra features (in fact with a somewhat higher technological barrier!) can sell for a bit more under the guise of OT. The same way that Toyota changes the bodywork on their Camry, calls it a Lexus something-or-other, and doubles the price; the same with Audi using VW "essentials": the much-touted TT is just a really fancy Bug. Some people take advantage of this business reality, others have more scruples. In fact, historically font houses have always looked for (and maybe even sometimes concocted, or at least helped concoct) new formats to resell their core value (sets of letterforms) to a saturated market. Many of these fonts we're using have been around for hundreds of years, and we're constantly having to re-pay for them... It's the price of technology I guess---it has a life of its own, with a ravenous apetite that must be fed." [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Bas Jacobs and Akiem Helmling designed Dolly (2001), a 4-font book typeface with flourishes, brushy, sturdy, Dutch. They created Sofa, a precursor of Sauna (2002; +Sauna Mono Pro), which won an award at the TDC2 2003 competition. In 2002, they made Stool for a Finnish printing house, Salpausselän Kirjapaino Ltd. Ulrika is a custom display typeface designed for Proidea Oy (a Finnish film and video production company). Unibody 8 and 10 (2003) is a free OpenType pixel font optimized for FlashMX. In 2004, they created Auto, about which they write: Auto is a sans serif typeface which has three different models of italics, each with its own flavour. The font family consists of 3 x 24 fonts. With its three italics, Auto creates a new typographic palette, allowing the user to drive through unknown typographic and linguistic possibilities. Auto is fully loaded with both full Western and Eastern European character sets. Auto won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition. Additional material on the web page: a wonderful intro to type basics, and an intro to OpenType. In 2004, they published the comic book / signage family Bello, which won an award at the TDC2 2005 type competition. In 2005, Underware joined the type coop Village. In 2006, they published Fakir, a blackletter family with Hindi inspirations. Fakir won an award at TDC2 2007. Interview in 2008. In 2009, they published the connected script brush typeface Liza (+Text, Display, Caps, Ornaments), which has several versions for each letter. In 2015, Bas Jacobs, Akiem Helmling and Sami Kortemäki published the stencil family Tripper Pro. Zeitung Pro (2016) is a substantial sans family, designed for micro and macro use, with optical sizes, and a Zeitung Flex variable Opentype font to boot. Custom types: Stockmann Sans (2012, with Kokoro & Moi: for the Scandinavian department store), Kone (2012: for the elevator company), Mr. Porter (script with a dozen alternatives for each glyph to better simulate real handwriting; it was awarded at TDC 2012 and at Tokyo TDC 2012), Stool (Headline, Thin, Grand), Sauna Mono (for the Danish Jyske Bank), Fated (fat), Ulrika (rounded and informal, slightly plump: for Proidea Ltd, a Finnish video production company), Suunto (2012; for sports watches, i.e., Suunto's Cobra2, Vyper2 and Elementum). Underware received a prize in the TDC Tokyo Type Directorts Club 2020 awards for Grammato, a contribution in the area of animated and automated typography. Their typeface Y (2020) is an OpenType Variable Display typeface, based on higher order interpolation. It won an award at 23TDC. In 2021, Underware released Plakato Pro, a stencil family that expanded into the neon, outline, inline, video game, grunge, kitchen tile and prismatic versions. MyFonts interview. Type Network link. View Underware's typeface library. Speaker(s) at ATypI 2019 in Tokyo, where they introduce the notion of grammatography: writing with letters that are not prefabricated, but that react to the user and reader---grammatos. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Selected releases: URW Egyptienne, URW Grotesk (1985, Hermann Zapf), Anzeigen Grotesk (2009), Clarendon No 1 URW, Saa Series (an industrial sans: the official typeface for Australian road signage), Nimbus Sans (1987, a Helvetica clone), Nimbus Sans Novus, Nimbus Sans Europa (covering Latin, Greek, Baltic, Cyrillic, Central European, Turkish, Romanian, and so forth), Nimbus Roman No 9 (2001), Nimbus Sans Global and Nimbus Roman Global, each at about 2000 Euros, and each containing 35,000 glyphs, from kanji/Chinese/Korean to all European languages. House typefaces done for corporations: DaimlerChrysler Corporate ASE (after the Corporate ASE series for Daimler-Benz by Kurt Weidemann), Gardena Sans (2015, for Gardena), Siemens Schriftfamilie, Deutsche Telekom Schriftfamilie, ZF Friedrichshafen, Körber Argo, URW++ SelecType Raldo (2001, for Igepa). MyFonts lists their bestsellers. Catalog of their typefaces [large web page warning]. Another catalog of URW's typefaces. Eight-minute corporate movie produced in the summer of 2014. Adobe link. [Google] [MyFonts] [More] ⦿ | |
Werner Lemberg
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Nice listing of unicode ranges for the WGL4.0 character set. [Google] [More] ⦿ | |
Sidus Micro Technology from Dubai, UAE, is involved in OpenType font development, for Arabic and other languages. Contact: Waiel H. Ali. [Google] [More] ⦿ |
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Russian developer of these free font families, quite exquisite and complete: 
Paris-based outfit that specalizes in interactive design. In 2016, they experimented with that in type design when they exploited some Opentype features in the 
George Williams' free Open Source UNIX-based font editor for type 1 and truetype fonts, previously called Pfaedit. Also does truetype collections (TTC) and opentype fonts. Note that FontForge can be used to do all conversions between all formats (type 1, truetype, OpenType; PC, UNIX and Mac): it's a formidable tool. The internal text format for fonts is called SFD. It is a format that is acceptable for communicating and storing fonts. Note also that there is a 
I quote Gerald Giampa (
Khaled Hosny is a physician in Egypt. He loves Arabic and its type, and is interested in every aspect of letter forms and typography. A hobbyist translator, programmer and font developer, he supports software freedom and is actively participating in the free software community. 
Japanese type designer and type director, b. 1929. Designer of the 
Respected Japanese foundry, based in Osaka and Tokyo, est. 1924 and incorporated in 1948. Its US office is located in 
A defect in the design of OpenType and in the way the Windows operating system handles it can cause a Windows crash. Read here exclusively how this could happen. A demo OpenType font is included, as well as instructions on how to change OpenType files to behave in this manner. 
Adobe has converted its type 1 library to OpenType. The first fonts ever published by Adobe in OT format included 
Underware is a (typo)graphic design-studio which is specialized in designing and producing typefaces. These are published for retail sale or are specially tailor-made. The company was founded in 1999 by Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs and Sami Kortemäki. Since 2002 Hugo Cavalheiro d'Alte is also part of the studio. They are based in Den Haag, Helsinki and Amsterdam. In 2017, they joined 
URW++ Design&Development GmbH is a Hamburg-based foundry established in 1995 by Svend Bang, Hans-Jochen Lau, Peter Rosenfeld, and Jürgen Willrodt. URW stands for Unternehmensberatung Rubow Weber, named after Gerhard Rubow and Rudolf Weber, cofounders of the original URW company from which urw++ evolved. It offers a whole range of font services and has an extensive (7000+) font library. At the basis of the early development of many classy PostScript fonts. For example, in 1999, URW++ donated the 35 core PostScript fonts (renamed) under the GNU GPL license to the Ghostscript project. The great 3000-font CD costs about 2000DM. Other CDs are more expensive: on the ITF CD, each font is about 100DM! URW sells fonts and font families with complete rights (you can change, resell, embed, anything, except use the original name), with examples ranging from 2k for a complete family of 12 to 5k for a collection of 250 fonts. This practice continues until today: URW++ thus provides a great service to software developers who want to include high-quality typefaces in their software applications. URW has offices in many countries. In the first decade of the 21st century, freelance type designer Ralph M. Unger contributed most frequently to the URW library. 
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