learning about fonts and font types

[pateeg]

I would like to find a quick tutorial on font types, ie.,
the differences between open type, postscript, true type and
when they are used or more importantly, must not be used, and how to recognize them.

[eugenetyson]

http://linux.about.com/od/howtos/l/blfont2.htm

[pateeg]

thank you, I think this helped a little, but I still feel a little muddy.

[eugenetyson]

On what exactly?

[GuyB]

I just posted this on your other thread :

http://maczealots.com/tutorials/fonts/#formats

You will find many other references at the end of this article.

[Len Zigante]

I would like to find a quick tutorial on font types, ie.,
the differences between open type, postscript, true type and
when they are used or more importantly, must not be used, and how to recognize them.

I think what you are looking for is a rule of thumb & brief explanation so here is mine :

Open Type contains glyphs & all sorts of wonderful extra characters that you wont find in true type & postscript mainly because open type can hold so many more characters. Its a complete font (has all the standard flavors of the font in it) & is not platform dependent.

True Type is a complete font as well and was developed by Microsoft. It has no where near the character & glyph set that Open Type has. True type is not platform dependent I believe.

Postscript is not a complete font developed by Adobe & is similar to True type (it was developed before True Type). Unlike True Type & Open type fonts, Postscript font files usually contain only one specific flavor of a font (italic, bold, regular, bold italic, thin, medium, heavy, etc.) so you need a whole whack of postscript font files to have all the variations. Take note that true type usually doesn't contain the exotic flavors but usually has the standard ones: bold, italic, bold-italic, & regular). Postscript is platform dependent thus fonts created for older OS9 & lower Macs wont work on PCs & visa versa... you need a conversion program.

Unlike the above fonts which are vector, Bitmap fonts are raster fonts & come in 2 parts, a screen font & a printer font. There are font sizes you have to consider to keep your print looking crisp & proper.

Its my experience that you can use & mix all of these tho you'd be hard pressed to find Bitmap fonts anymore. Some people report conflicts if mixing fonts tho I have yet to encounter that problem.

The best to use is probably open type because of all the glyph options (like fractions) tho it will have the least amount of software support being newer. True type & Postscript have the most support but no glyph options. All will produce good print results. Depending on what u r doing (eg. web pages) some fonts wont be available to users as they don't come with their systems/software so that is something to consider if you dont want your page or printouts distorted.

For the most part be cautious of fonts produced by novice font developers as they often contain errors. They may look fine on your screen but can cause all sorts of headaches & possibly crashes at print time.

Another thing to watch for when mixing fonts are fonts with the exact same name but are different beasts (eg. true type vs postscript Times New Roman). This can cause software confusion when it comes time to print as the fonts usually are NOT identical & the little differences can cause print to shift producing results that are definitely not WYSIWYG. For this reason you may want to ensure you only have one type of a font installed that goes by any specific name. (or you can throw caution to the wind & have a full mix of everything like we do at this company despite what I've said here).

I think that generally covers it... for more specific info go to the library.

Hope this helps.

[pateeg]

thank you for that very thoughtful explanation and thank you to everyone who responded. I am sure that there are many who will benefit.

just a few questions:

do the various font file types come from a process of evolving operating systems?

ok, say there's a number of helveticas in your computer. you have helvetica that's got the bold, the condensed, theblack the compressed, etc. these are postscript files.
then there's helvetica neue with twice the number of styles for this font, also postscript.
what does one call these two: helvetica and helvetica neue? Are they each a font family? a font style? a font?

something can be a glyph without being a character. but a character is always a glyph right? because a character is comprised of a glyph?

and then most fonts we have on our computer systems, if say our computers are pretty up to date, would be postscript?

who has true type fonts? who tends to use them?

[The Repro Kid]

thank you for that very thoughtful explanation and thank you to everyone who responded. I am sure that there are many who will benefit.

just a few questions:

do the various font file types come from a process of evolving operating systems? yes, apple and adobe first created post script fonts which began or helped begin the DTP revolution. before there were only bitmap. then Microsoft and apple created True type, trying to simplify post script, but it never was truly cross platform and DTP movement was already set in post script, finally Open type came along, this is fairly modern. Before opentype, most DTP was in Post script.

ok, say there's a number of helveticas in your computer. you have helvetica that's got the bold, the condensed, theblack the compressed, etc. these are postscript files.
then there's helvetica neue with twice the number of styles for this font, also postscript.
what does one call these two: helvetica and helvetica neue? Are they each a font family? a font style? a font? yes, yes, and yes. Fonts have history. they are created and founded on paper, in lead type, photo type, and now digital type. The historic face names come long before digital type. the different names to the same faces can be attributed to the foundry or author of face or other inspirational variants. Helvetica is some sort of modernist face, maybe from the 1940's europe. Another common variant was "Swiss" which was common in photo typeset days but I don't really see it in the digital fonts. Helvetica can be used instead of swiss although they are slightly different. Futura and Avant Garde are from a similar time point as Helvetica in Type Face history.

and then most fonts we have on our computer systems, if say our computers are pretty up to date, would be postscript?If you are on a Mac in creative environment then mostlikely yes, if you are on a PC in a creative environment then hopefully yes.

who has true type fonts? who tends to use them?Office work, business work, not DTP or Graphics, or printing.

[AdobeAce]

Hi pateeg,

If you're really interested in the history of desktop publishing, take a look at Inside the Publishing Revolution -- The Adobe Story by Pamela Pfiffner (Peachpit Press). Absolutely fascinating book.

Desktop publishing started in 1984 because three things came together at the same time -- Adobe Postscript fonts, the Macintosh computer, and Aldus (remember them?) PageMaker. And then of course the Apple Laserwriter (with Adobe Postscript drivers),

Ace
:D