CoolType is a software technology, introduced by Adobe Systems in 2000,[1] 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.
The main reason why Adobe built their own sub-pixel renderer is so they could display documents the same way across various operating systems: Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.[2] When it was launched, CoolType supported a wider range of fonts than Microsoft's ClearType, which was then limited to TrueType fonts, whereas Adobe's CoolType also supported PostScript fonts (and their OpenType equivalent as well).[3]
CoolType is also available in non-Adobe applications through the commercially licensed Adobe PDF Library.[4]
As with ClearType, Quartz and FreeType, CoolType uses subpixel rendering to effectively triple the usual horizontal resolution of the screen. This makes the text sharper, but the colors might be slightly incorrect at the edges. However, the human eye is better at detecting variations in intensity than in color, and these discrepancies are not usually noticeable.
CoolType also obsoleted the Adobe Type Manager (ATM). Because the font selection menus that CoolType provides display fewer details than ATM, there were some initial problems in editing TeX PostScript output in Adobe applications that used CoolType.[5]
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.
In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device; so it is the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen.
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it. PDF has its roots in "The Camelot Project" initiated by Adobe co-founder John Warnock in 1991.
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Brotz, Ed Taft and Bill Paxton from 1982 to 1984.
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.
Display PostScript is a 2D graphics engine system for computers which uses the PostScript (PS) imaging model and language to generate on-screen graphics. To the basic PS system, DPS adds a number of features intended to ease working with bitmapped displays and improve performance of some common tasks.
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Subpixel rendering is a way to increase the apparent resolution of a computer's liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display by rendering pixels to take into account the screen type's physical properties. It takes advantage of the fact that each pixel on a color LCD is actually composed of individual red, green, and blue or other color subpixels to anti-alias text with greater detail or to increase the resolution of all image types on layouts which are specifically designed to be compatible with subpixel rendering.
Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface. The typeface was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler (1919–1999). Initially created for IBM's typewriters, it has been adapted for use as a computer font, and versions of it are installed on most desktop computers.
FreeType is a popular 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, and "is designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable while capable of producing high-quality output ."
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.
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.
Adobe Type Manager (ATM) was the name of a family of computer programs created and marketed by Adobe Systems for use with their PostScript Type 1 fonts. The last release was Adobe ATM Light 4.1.2, per Adobe's FTP.
Cambria is a transitional serif typeface commissioned by Microsoft and distributed with Windows and Office. It was designed by Dutch typeface designer Jelle Bosma in 2004, with input from Steve Matteson and Robin Nicholas. It is intended as a serif font that is suitable for body text, that is very readable printed small or displayed on a low-resolution screen and has even spacing and proportions.
Resolution independence is where elements on a computer screen are rendered at sizes independent from the pixel grid, resulting in a graphical user interface that is displayed at a consistent physical size, regardless of the resolution of the screen.
Apple's Macintosh computer supports a wide variety of fonts. This support was one of the features that initially distinguished it from other systems.
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.
Interferometric modulator display is a technology used in electronic visual displays that can create various colors via interference of reflected light. The color is selected with an electrically switched light modulator comprising a microscopic cavity that is switched on and off using driver integrated circuits similar to those used to address liquid crystal displays (LCD). An IMOD-based reflective flat panel display includes hundreds of thousands of individual IMOD elements each a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based device.
PenTile matrix is a family of patented subpixel matrix schemes used in electronic device displays. PenTile is a trademark of Samsung. PenTile matrices are used in AMOLED and LCD displays.
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