Basic terms 2

anonymous22 Apr 2003

hi all,
i'va few basic questions :-)
1. what is the differance between truetype, open type and postdcript type?
2. what is the differance between the weights "light" and "book"?
3.Is the widths of capital and small caps in a monospaced font are sepposed to be the same?
thanx
roy

John Hudson22 Apr 2003#

Double post.

matha_standun23 Apr 2003#

I have never seen a clearer definition of the formats.

Me neither. But I suspect that Roy is going to start a 'basic terms 3' thread to find out what quadratic B-spline curves are.

M

jay23 Apr 2003#

Here

http://www.font.to/downloads/TT_PS_OT.pdf

is a 9-page PDF that explains the similarities, differences, history & possible future of the 3 major font types

Jay

Stephen Coles23 Apr 2003#

That was worth posting twice, John. I have never seen a
clearer definition of the formats. I salute you.

anonymous23 Apr 2003#

matha - i guess you are right :-)
but first i try to learn more at microsoft and adobe... since for some reason i couldn't open the pdf file Jay attached.
thanx :-) roy

John Hudson22 Apr 2003#

1.
A TrueType font is a font with an sfnt table format structure utilising quadratic B-spline curves for outlines.

A PostScript font may have a variety of different formats (Type 1, Type 3, sfnt (see below), etc.); it is most easily distinguised from a TrueType font by its use of cubic Bezier curves for outlines.

An OpenType font is a font with an sfnt table format structure utilising either quadratic B-spline ('TrueType flavour') or cubic Bezier ('PostScript flavour') curves for outlines. An OpenType font may also contain optional tables that enable sophisticated glyph substitution and positioning.

All this information is readily available from Microsoft and Adobe's websites.

...

3.
Yes, this is what makes it a monospaced font: all the glyphs have the same advanced width.

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 27 Apr 2015. original URL