Font Types

Over the years support for several different font types has been developed and evolved:

Raster Fonts

In a raster font each glyph is defined as a little bitmap designed for a specific resolution. They are not scalable like vector based fonts. Nowadays raster fonts are mostly used for MS-DOS-based applications and onscreen display in user interface elements.

Vector Fonts

Vector fonts contain glyphs that are defined as a set of points that define line segments. Although they can be scaled to any size, both quality and performance are poor compared to modern font types like mentioned below.

PostScript Type 1 Fonts

Adobe launched PostScript Type 1 together with PostScript Type 3 in 1984. This scalable font technology became very popular among desktop publishers, but is now phasing out as OpenType fonts are the future.

TrueType Fonts

TrueType is a scalable  font technology designed by Apple Computer, available since 1991 (Apple's Macintosh System 7). Apple traded the technology with Microsoft and became available on Microsoft Windows 3.1 in 1992.

TrueType Font Collections

A TrueType Font Collection file is one or more TrueType fonts combined into one file.

OpenType Fonts

The OpenType font format is an extension of the TrueType font format, allowing support for PostScript font data. Technically there are two OpenType Font flavours; TrueType based (.ttf) and PostScript based (.otf). OpenType was developed jointly by Microsoft and Adobe to produce a hybrid between Type 1 and TrueType fonts, with additional features that work on Macintosh and Windows computers. OpenType fonts can include the OpenType Layout tables, which allow font creators to design better international and high-end typographic fonts.