Developer(s) | Bitstream Inc. |
---|---|
Initial release | October 1999 |
Stable release | 6.0 / May 10, 2011 |
Operating system | Platform Independent |
Type | Font Engine |
License | Proprietary EULA |
Website | http://www.bitstream.com/fonttechnology/font_fusion.html |
Bitstream Font Fusion is a small, fast, object-oriented font engine written in ANSI C capable of rendering high-quality text on any platform, any device, and at any resolution. The entire source code is portable, optimized, and executes independent of operating system and processor. The font engine is capable of rendering 2,400-3,300 characters per second on a 100 MIPS CPU. [1]
Font Fusion is designed such that it can meet the memory and performance requirements, even if the Asian languages that contain thousands of characters are to be supported. Font Fusion is also the core technology behind other Bitstream products, Panorama, ThunderHawk and myMMS.
In late 1980s, Sampo Kaasila, lead developer of TrueType and founder of Type Solutions (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Bitstream Inc.) designed T2K, a font renderer, which provided an object-oriented design, advanced architecture and algorithms, and was capable, to embed in all sorts of devices. Later in 1998, Bitstream acquired Type solutions and T2K evolved into Bitstream's font rasterizer, called Font Fusion.
Major version | Minor version | Release date | Significant changes |
---|---|---|---|
Version 1 | 1.0 | October 28, 1999 | Initial release. |
Version 2 | 2.0 | July 18, 2000 | Japanese/Korean Fonts support. Improved display of text for Internet appliances and wireless devices |
2.1 | June 12, 2001 | Includes an optional 1.23 MB unified stroke-based font with 30,000 CJK characters | |
2.2 | January 29, 2002 | Includes the Wireless Font Set (four proportional, four monospaced, and one symbol font), designed specifically for handheld and wireless devices | |
2.3 | April 2, 2002 | OpenType Support. Support for FFC standards for closed captioning. Character edge effects. Pen Styles, Character Offsetting, and Pen Sizes. New CCTV font set. | |
2.4 | April 8, 2003 | Enhanced support for OpenType and Type 1 fonts allowing access to all characters. Plug-in filter for embedding of bitmaps. | |
2.5 | June 22, 2004 | Integration support for Panorama (enhanced support for text composition with simultaneous release of Bitstream Panorama). Support to modify the color tables. Improved stroke-based font output. | |
Version 3 | 3.0 | June 6, 2005 | New support for Font compression at all font formats |
3.1 | November 3, 2005 | Caching for memory-constrained consumer devices and mobile phones | |
3.2 | April 25, 2006 | Optimized performance for mobile handsets and consumer electronics devices. Improved algorithms for compressed fonts. Optimized heap usage with fewer memory blocks. Reduced cache fragmentation | |
3.3 | November 6, 2006 | Improved font rendering speed for compressed fonts. | |
Version 4 | 4.0 | September 24, 2007 | Extension for BREW and new methods to create outline of the characters |
4.5 | April 10, 2008 | Includes Smart Scale technology that dynamically scales the extended characters to fit within the device's preset bounding box. 32-bit Unicode support for CJK font files with extended CMAPs for 32-bit Unicode values. Support for windows bitmap font format FNT/FON and CID-keyed fonts | |
Version 5 | 5.0 | July 15, 2009 | Includes support for fractional sizes, an optimized PFR format, optional OTF support, vertical processing, format 16 font headers, and enhanced printer support. |
Version 6 | 6.0 | May 10, 2011 | Includes support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF), OpenType fonts, Multiple Master Postscript Fonts, Type1 fonts and provides an optional Android wrapper add-on. Also includes an enhanced Font Manager and 32-bit filter tags for increased font customization and optimization. |
Consumer Electronic Devices, Mobile Handset, Set-top box, Digital TV, Printer, Printer Controller, Fax Machine, Multi-function Device, Medical Imaging Device, GPS System, Automobile Display, and other Embedded System
Web application, Graphics application, Gaming application
Font Fusion plug-in is available for the Symbian OS [2] as a dynamic-link library (DLL). [3] The plug-in inherits all the features supported by the core Font Fusion engine.
Font Fusion plug-in for BREW [4] platform provides a standard font-rendering framework that implements different BREW interfaces, supporting scalable and multilingual text.
Font Fusion framework is available for Qtopia [5] allowing any third party font rendering engine to work as plug-in with the Qt/Qtopia application platform. The framework also adds the capability to have any font format compatibility with Qt/Qtopia.
PostScript is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it can be used for many other purposes as well. PostScript was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton from 1982 to 1984. The most recent version, PostScript 3, was released in 1997.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display and printing hardware, vector data models and file formats, as well as the software based on these data models. Vector graphics is an alternative to raster or bitmap graphics, with each having advantages and disadvantages in specific situations.
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for printing, is a screen font.
Font rasterization is the process of converting text from a vector description to a raster or bitmap description. This often involves some anti-aliasing on screen text to make it smoother and easier to read. It may also involve hinting—information embedded in the font data that optimizes rendering details for particular character sizes.
OpenGL for Embedded Systems is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerated using a graphics processing unit (GPU). It is designed for embedded systems like smartphones, tablet computers, video game consoles and PDAs. OpenGL ES is the "most widely deployed 3D graphics API in history".
The Saffron Type System is a system for rendering high-quality scalable type on digital displays. It was developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, and is built on a core of adaptively-sampled distance field (ADF) technology. Saffron has been licensed to Adobe and Monotype and is shipping in numerous products such as the Adobe Flash Player and Amazon Kindle. Saffron has been implemented in both software and hardware.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0 in 2006. WPF uses DirectX and attempts to provide a consistent programming model for building applications. It separates the user interface from business logic, and resembles similar XML-oriented object models, such as those implemented in XUL and SVG.
FontForge is a FOSS font editor which supports many common font formats. Developed primarily by George Williams until 2012, FontForge is free software and is distributed under a mix of the GNU General Public License Version 3 and the 3-clause BSD license. It is available for operating systems including Linux, Windows, and macOS, and is localized into 12 languages.
Meiryo is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font on Japanese systems beginning with Windows Vista.
UniDrv is a GDI-based Microsoft Windows universal printer driver and architecture for non-PostScript printers. It is used to simplify driver development of non-PostScript printers for printer manufacturers. Unidrv allows the creation of a printer-specific minidriver in the form of a GPD file, similar to a PPD file, which is much simpler than kernel mode driver development. Unidrv was introduced in Windows 2000 and replaced the Raster Device Driver (RASDD) interface used in Windows NT 4.0 and earlier versions.
A Unicode font is a computer font that maps glyphs to code points defined in the Unicode Standard. The vast majority of modern computer fonts use Unicode mappings, even those fonts which only include glyphs for a single writing system, or even only support the basic Latin alphabet. Fonts which support a wide range of Unicode scripts and Unicode symbols are sometimes referred to as "pan-Unicode fonts", although as the maximum number of glyphs that can be defined in a TrueType font is restricted to 65,535, it is not possible for a single font to provide individual glyphs for all defined Unicode characters. This article lists some widely used Unicode fonts that support a comparatively large number and broad range of Unicode characters.
Apple's Macintosh computer supports a wide variety of fonts. This support was one of the features that initially distinguished it from other systems.
Embedded OpenType (EOT) fonts are a compact form of OpenType fonts designed by Microsoft for use as embedded fonts on web pages. These files use the extension .eot
. They are supported only by Microsoft Internet Explorer, as opposed to competing WOFF files.
PostScript fonts are font files encoded in outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional digital typesetting. This system uses PostScript file format to encode font information.
Panorama is a line layout and text composition engine to render text in various worldwide languages made by Bitstream Inc. Panorama uses Font Fusion as the base to support rendering of the text. The engine allows the user to manage different text formatting aspects like spacing, alignment, style effects.
ThunderHawk is a discontinued web browser from Bitstream available for a full range of operating systems in high end and mass-market mobile phones and personal digital assistants. It is basically meant for mobile operators and original equipment manufacturers and not meant to download for normal users.
GNU Unifont is a free Unicode bitmap font created by Roman Czyborra. The main Unifont covers all of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). The "upper" companion covers significant parts of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP). The "Unifont JP" companion contains Japanese kanji present in the JIS X 0213 character set.