PostScript Type1, CFF, TrueType, OpenType are "standards" in the sense that they are font formats widely used and supported on multiple platforms. They are proprietary in as much as certain companies control the specifications - but these specifications are publicly available and there is nothing to stop anyone producing fonts in these formats, tools to make them, and software which uses them.
[ The only thing there has been any real controversy or concern about are three Apple patents relating to grid fitting glyph outlines of TrueType fonts (see: http://www.freetype.org/patents.html ) - and, as it says there "It's important to understand that the patents do not prevent anyone from reading, converting or generating TrueType fonts. As they only concern the subtle art of hinting TrueType glyphs, it's even possible to legally display text with TrueType fonts, as long as the patented techniques aren't used to optimise the bitmaps at small pixel sizes." Also AFAIK Apple have never threatned anyone with enforcement of these patents. ] There are other font formats out there - Apple's AAT, SIL's Graphite, Knuth's Metafont, Bitstream's Speedo, Adobe's Glyph Bitmap Distribution format (BDF) etc, etc. You should be able to find plenty of information if you search For rendering Unicode for complex scripts - OpenType seems to be the about the closest thing there is to a de-facto "standard" right now. It has the features neccessary for rendering complex scripts and is supported on MS Windows and several other platforms. There are other altenatives some of which are discussed at http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=IWS-Chapter07 For simple scripts, where there is a straightforward one-to-one mapping between characters and glyphs and no contextual variation of glyph forms etc, plain TrueType fonts do nicely. Although the SVG font specification may come from a standards body [W3C] afaik SVG fonts are only of any use if you want to embed the font definitions in an SVG file where the font is used. There doesn't seem to be anything that actually makes use of them in any other kind of document. - Chris -- CJ Fynn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mete Kural" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 2:41 PM Subject: Font Technology Standards > Hello All, > > I have a question. What are the font technology standards are there? I know about these font technologies but I don't know how "standard" or how "proprietary" they are. > > Postscript > TrueType > OpenType > > I have also read about "SVG Fonts" and since that is defined by W3C this is surely a real "standard". Are SVG Fonts the only non-proprietary font technology standard out there? > > Please share with me your insight. > > Thanks, > Mete
