Typophile

T1 TT & OS X

thelring

I just read this tread:

www.typophile.com/forums/messages/4101/64337.html?1108141322

and this one by Adam:

"Mac OS 9 and Adobe applications use Adobe software (ATM/CoolType) to render the Type 1 fonts. Mac OS X uses Apple's own ATSUI renderer. The most obvious differences are visible with hinting. Mac OS X displays some extreme deterioration of screen display of Type 1 font, which is "ironed over" a bit when the type is antialiased. But it's thoroughly possible that other aspects of the fonts, e.g. metrics, kerning, or special treatment of particular characters, is realized differently in the ATSUI model by Apple than in the ATM/CoolType model by Adobe."

* can I have more info about this issue (i.e an article)?

* Mac OS 9 and Adobe applications use Adobe software (ATM/CoolType) to render the Type 1 fonts.... - what about TT fonts? and Open Type?

* Mac OS X uses Apple's own ATSUI renderer. The most obvious differences are visible with hinting. Mac OS X displays some extreme deterioration of screen display of Type 1 font...... - what about TT fonts? and Open Type?

Thank you!

Thomas Phinney

OS X does its own new rendering thing with fonts of all formats. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on who you talk to.

However, below that, it still has rasterizer code inherited from previous OSes, including Adobe's rasterizer for Type 1 / OpenType CFF that Adobe licensed to Apple. Either Apple has deleted/changed pre-existing code, or they are mostly doing additional processing to get to their end results. The distinction is a bit of a moot point, I suppose.

T

thelring

I see (I see that I don't understand :-) )


thelring

(things too slow here...no one is going to join, talk, share his knowledge...mmmmm)

Thomas Phinney

> that is why I can run classic with OS X? (I mean to use the "old", classic fonts with OS X)

I don't actually understand the question here. Other than dfonts, which are just a repackaging of Mac TrueType fonts, there is no difference between "old" fonts and "new" fonts. The font *formats* haven't changed, but how they are supported has, and additionally Apple has changed how they are rendered (which is a separate question). OS X adds support for Windows-style TTF and TrueType flavored OpenType. It integrates Type 1 and OpenType CFF support that used to require ATM as an add-on.

I hope that somewhere in there I answered your question.

T

Captured from web.archive.org on 11 Oct 2013. view this capture