TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 01:02:12 EST 2024

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Microsoft Font Validator [Hin-Tak Leung]

Font Validator is a free tool for testing fonts prior to release. This testing ensures that fonts meet Microsoft's high quality standards and perform exceptionally well on Microsoft's platform. Major developers include Hin-Tak Leung and Aaron Bell. Dave Crossland's comments on this project: This tool was developed mainly in the 1990s, and had fallen into an unmaintained state. The version downloadable from the Microsoft typography web site is from 2003 and it performs 177 tests. Aaron and I spoke about liberating it so it could be brought up to modern standards in NYC last year, and after getting approval from his team I sought out some volunteers to take a look. The main obstacle to liberating the tool was that it partially depended on the Windows font rendering system which was unlikely to be liberated, and less importantly, parts of MSIE for XML report rendering. The corresponding libre renderer is FreeType and Hin-Tak Leung, a FreeType developer, volunteered; his experience with Mono, the libre implementation of Microsofts app platform, made the work ahead to make it run with and without Windows somewhat familiar. Aaron was then able to pass Hin-Tak parts of the source code that was updated inside MS around 2009, for the last OpenType spec being prepared at that time as well as testing for ClearType rasterization. The 2009 code does 194 tests. Today Mono on non-windows can be used to build and run it, and Hin-Tak is mainly developing it using GNU+Linux, and it works on Mac OS X also. Hin-Tak did an amazing job and now that it runs, Aaron has been able to finally post it publicly. Also my thanks to Cosimo Lupo at Dalton Maag for testing and verifying Hin-Tak's work along the way.

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EXTERNAL LINKS
Microsoft Font Validator
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Monotype search
Fontspring search
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INTERNAL LINKS
Font software ⦿