FreeType

Last updated
FreeType
Developer(s) David Turner, Robert Wilhelm, Werner Lemberg [1] [2] and FreeType contributors
Initial release1996;28 years ago (1996) [3]
Stable release
2.13.2 [4]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 25 August 2023;7 months ago (25 August 2023)
Repository
Written in C
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Software development library: Font rasterization
License GNU General Public License / FreeType License
Website freetype.org
Subpixel e.png
Subpixel is.png
Subpixel w.png
Lower case e, is, and w subpixel rendered with FreeType

FreeType is a software development library used to render text onto bitmaps, and which provides support for other font-related operations. The FreeType font rasterization engine is free and open-source software with the source code dual-licensed under a BSD-like license and the GPL. FreeType supports a number of font formats, including TrueType, Type 1, and OpenType. [5]

Contents

History

The FreeType rendering engine was started in 1995 by David Turner with the intent to provide TrueType font support for the OS/2 operating system, [1] including an interpreter for handling TrueType bytecode. Originally written in the Pascal programming language, it was ported in 1997 by Robert Wilhelm to C. [3] [6] [7]

FreeType 1 had support only for the TrueType font format, but it included an extension to support OpenType text layout features.

Major rewrite 2.0

Version 2.0 of FreeType was a complete rewrite to make it more modular. FreeType 2 brought support for more font formats and an evolved source code which the developers stated was "simpler and more powerful". [8] FreeType 2 is not backward-compatible with FreeType 1 but the developers stated that moving from FreeType 1 to FreeType 2 poses little difficulty. [8] As text layout processing was not an objective of FreeType 2, however, the OpenType text layout functionality of FreeType 1 was removed in FreeType 2. A very evolved form of the OpenType text layout functionality of FreeType 1 is used in the Pango text layout library. The HarfBuzz project is further evolving that functionality with a complete rewrite offered as a standalone library with a less restrictive license than Pango's license. [9]

Patent conflicts

In 1999, the Freetype project was informed by Apple Incorporated that FreeType was infringing patents related to TrueType font hinting. Following that, Freetype deactivated by default or worked around patent relating technologies. Therefore, several open source projects, such as FreeBSD or Linux, had FreeType included with font hinting functionality disabled or degraded to avoid the issue of software patents held by Apple Inc. [10]

Since May 2010, all conflicting software patents related to font hinting have expired, [10] allowing FreeType's TrueType font hinter to be used in open source. Many of the operating systems which disabled the renderer now give the user the option to enable it. In Fedora, freetype-freeworld was switched from the proprietary yum repository to the free repository. [11]

Since August 2019, all conflicting software patents related to ClearType color filtering have expired, [10] allowing FreeType to use ClearType color filtering method in 2.10.3.

Compact Font Format engine donation

In 2013 Adobe donated a Compact Font Format rendering engine to the FreeType project which integrated it and made it the default with version 2.5. [12] [13]

Users

FreeType is used as a font renderer in Android, ChromeOS. [14] Apple uses FreeType in iOS [14] and macOS [15] next to Apple Advanced Typography. In 2007, Sun Microsystems switched from using a proprietary font rasterizer to using FreeType in the OpenJDK Java development kit. [16] On Windows, projects like gdipp [17] and MacType [18] aim to override the system renderer with FreeType. FreeType is also used as a font renderer in ReactOS. [19]

As well as being used by the major free software desktop systems, FreeType has been used as a rasterization engine for some modern video games, [20] [21] [22] and Opera for the Wii. [23] Sony ships FreeType with its PlayStation 3, [24] PlayStation 4, [25] and PlayStation Vita [26] consoles.

Related Research Articles

ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation. This trade-off is asserted to work well on LCD flat panel monitors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PostScript</span> File format and programming language

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghostscript</span> Interpreter for the PostScript language

Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subpixel rendering</span> Technique for increasing apparent display resolution

Subpixel rendering is a method used to increase the effective resolution of a color display device. It takes advantage of each pixel's composition of individually addressable red, green, and blue components adjacent on the display matrix, called subpixels, and uses them as rendering units instead of pixels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font rasterization</span> Process of converting text from vector to raster

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XeTeX</span> TeX typesetting engine

XeTeX is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType, Graphite and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). It was originally written by Jonathan Kew and is distributed under the X11 free software license.

Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) is Apple Inc.'s computer technology for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid-1990s. It is a set of extensions to the TrueType outline font standard, with smartfont features similar to the OpenType font format that was developed by Adobe and Microsoft, and to Graphite. It also incorporates concepts from Adobe's "multiple master" font format, allowing for axes of traits to be defined and morphing of a glyph independently along each of these axes. AAT font features do not alter the underlying typed text; they only affect the characters' representation during glyph conversion.

Core fonts for the Web was a project started by Microsoft in 1996 to create a standard pack of fonts for the World Wide Web. It included the proprietary fonts Andalé Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings, all of them in TrueType font format packaged in executable files (".exe") for Microsoft Windows and in BinHexed Stuff-It archives (".sit.hqx") for Macintosh. These packages were published as freeware under a proprietary license imposing some restrictions on distribution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font hinting</span> Technique for improving font rendering

Font hinting is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible text. It can be accompanied by antialiasing and subpixel rendering for further clarity.

Apple's Macintosh computer supports a wide variety of fonts. This support was one of the features that initially distinguished it from other systems.

CoolType is a software technology, introduced by Adobe Systems in 2000, to increase the legibility of text on color liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) like laptop or thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD monitors, especially to make reading long text, like E-Books, easier. Although it is primarily for LCDs, the legibility on cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors is also improved.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberation fonts</span> Open-source font superfamily

Liberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: Liberation Sans, Liberation Sans Narrow, Liberation Serif, and Liberation Mono. These fonts are metrically compatible with the most popular fonts on the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office software package, for which Liberation is intended as a free substitute. The fonts are default in LibreOffice.

HarfBuzz is a software development library for text shaping, which is the process of converting Unicode text to glyph indices and positions. The newer version, New HarfBuzz (2012–), targets various font technologies while the first version, Old HarfBuzz (2006–2012), targeted only OpenType fonts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web typography</span> Publishing considerations for the Web

Web typography, like typography generally, is the design of pages – their layout and typeface choices. Unlike traditional print-based typography, pages intended for display on the World Wide Web have additional technical challenges and – given its ability to change the presentation dynamically – additional opportunities. Early web page designs were very simple due to technology limitations; modern designs use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript and other techniques to deliver the typographer's and the client's vision.

Modern HTML5 has feature-parity with the now-obsolete Adobe Flash. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages. Flash was specifically built to integrate vector graphics and light games in a web page, features that HTML5 also supports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Karow</span> German entrepreneur

Peter Karow is a German entrepreneur, inventor and software developer. He holds several patents in the field of desktop publishing and is known for his work on computer fonts. He contributed with several books and patents to the development of operating systems for computers. He is recognized as the inventor of outline computer fonts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Variable font</span> Font file with many design variants

A variable font (VF) is a font file that is able to store a continuous range of design variants. An entire typeface can be stored in such a file, with an infinite number of fonts available to be sampled.

References

  1. 1 2 "Interview with David Turner of Freetype". OSNews. June 28, 2007. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  2. ↑ "The FreeType Project LICENSE" (text). FreeType. January 27, 2006. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  3. 1 2 "FreeType History". 2013-07-02. Retrieved 2014-08-06.
  4. ↑ Werner LEMBERG (25 August 2023). "[ft-announce] Announcing FreeType 2.13.2" . Retrieved 28 August 2023.
  5. ↑ "FreeType 2 Overview". FreeType 2. SourceForge, Inc. July 4, 2010. Features. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  6. ↑ "The FreeType 2 FAQ". Archived from the original on 18 July 2009.
  7. ↑ "What are the differences between FreeType 1.x and FreeType 2 ?". Experts123.com. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  8. 1 2 "FreeType 2 FAQ". FreeType 2. Retrieved July 26, 2011.
  9. ↑ "HarfBuzz". Freedesktop.org. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  10. 1 2 3 "FreeType and Patents". FreeType. SourceForge, Inc. July 4, 2010. Retrieved March 31, 2011.
  11. ↑ "RepoView: RPM Fusion (Fedora - free) development Source RPM Packages". Download1.rpmfusion.org. 2014-03-11. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  12. ↑ Miñoza, Nicole (1 May 2013). "Adobe contributes font rasterizer technology to FreeType". Adobe TypeKit Blog.
  13. ↑ "You've Got CFF!". Google Open Source Blog. 19 June 2013.
  14. 1 2 "Got CFF?". Google Open Source Blog. 1 May 2013. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  15. ↑ "About the security content of OS X Lion v10.7.3 and Security Update 2012-001". Support.apple.com. 2012-05-31. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  16. ↑ "Font Scaler" . Retrieved 4 April 2014.
  17. ↑ "gdipp" . Retrieved 4 August 2014.
  18. ↑ "MacType". GitHub . Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  19. ↑ Royal, Simon (2014-02-26). "ReactOS: A Windows Compatible Alternative OS". lowendmac.com. Retrieved 2016-01-10. While the main core of ReactOS is built from scratch, it has some dependencies on existing software and protocols. It uses parts of Wine, networking in the form of lwIP, USB from Haiku, as well as FreeType, Mesa3D, and UniATA.
  20. ↑ Games company Relic Entertainment has used FreeType for their games Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, as can be seen in the credits on the loading screens.
  21. ↑ FreeType has also been implemented in the American Girl games for the PC such as A Treehouse of My Own and Julie Saves The Eagles.
  22. ↑ Games company Bandai Namco Entertainment has also used FreeType for Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, as can be seen in the copyright section.
  23. ↑ Opera 9 for the Wii console uses FreeType, as can be seen by looking at the "Third-party information" page which can be found on the Wii via: Internet Channel > Operations Guide > About > Opera 9 for Wii — Third-party information
  24. ↑ "PlayStation 3 License". Scei.co.jp. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  25. ↑ "Open Source Software used in PlayStation®4". Scei.co.jp. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  26. ↑ "Open Source Software used in PlayStation®Vita". Scei.co.jp. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
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