Font Forum

In my FONTS folder on my EHD (external hard drive) I have many fonts of the same name, but with different extensions, example .ttf and .otf. Should I delete the .ttf fonts and just keep the .otf fonts to bring into Maintype?

Impossible to say without knowing the differences between the fonts.

I would suggest importing a few, examining them in MainType and then deciding which is better.

Look at licensing information, embedding rights, glyph coverage, and OpenType features. The extension does not mean much.

There are many web pages that cover this topic, but most people don't understand what they are talking about, so most of that information is incorrect, and people continue to repeat that misleading information.

Here is a topic that tries to explain the differences between font file extensions and internal bezier formats:
What's the Difference Between TrueType and OpenType Fonts?

Thank you for the article, which is somewhat confusing for me as I have a lot to learn and understand.

The 'Summary' in the article says: Pure TrueType fonts are legacy and should be avoided. Does that mean any font marked TRUETYPE in MainType is an old font and may not work/print correctly?

I have lots and lots of old fonts that I have collected over the years and only now wanting to organize them, but should avoid downloading any more TRUETYPE fonts, if available.

I have lots of OpenType TT; OpenType CFF and OpenType Collection TT which I presume as more recent and OK to keep and organize.

Thank you so much for you help.

Irene

As Bhikkhu Pesala already told you, it is not possible to determine which one is best, or if they are equal, without inspecting the inside of both fonts.

Let me know if you see room for improvement in the article, I am a technician, not a writer

You can either add them to MainType and see what font information both contain, or use FontCreator to further inspect both fonts. Or just contact the font vendor and ask them for advise.

If the font is made recently, then most likely both are equal, except one uses quadratic and the other cubic bezier curves for the glyph outlines. Then maybe hinting could be a deciding factor, but that also depends on the way you intent to use the font. On a Mac both formats then should work just fine. On a Window PC the OpenType TT probably works best.

Thank you. Irene

I have the same question as Irene, and I've read the entire manual as well as the article about myths & misconceptions. I'm still very stuck.

Like Irene, I have many fonts that have both OpenType CFF (green O in the Type column) and OpenType TT (blue O in the Type column) files. I can imagine that I don't need both versions of these fonts, but since I'm importing thousands of fonts into MainType, I would like to have something to go on.

What is considered "best practice" inside of MainType?
- Should I load both "green" and "blue" into the software?
- Is it recommended to add one or the other to the "ignore" list?
- Would it be best to make a habit of using Family Grouping, and just load/install the entire font family so that I can avoid the question?

I fully understand that the file extension isn't a good metric for analyzing fonts, but surely something can be gleaned from the green/blue or CFF/TT distinction shown in the View panel.

Thanks for your help!

I have also read everything and I'm still a little stuck. It sounds like I have to inspect every single font where there is a duplicate listed, and look at the font properties to decide which version I want to have installed? Holy crap, what a tedious process. Then, it appears that I still won't know what fonts my software will be using, and what features the software can use from that font??

I mean, isn't there some way to have some sort of rule of thumb? For instance, on the bottom of the following page...
https://www.high-logic.com/font-editor/ ... type-fonts

...it does mention that if you are using Word, that you will probably want to use OpenType fonts with TrueType based outlines, so they can be embedded in PDF exports.

Is there some kind of similar rule of thumb if you are working with Adobe software?? What about Microsoft Publisher?

And finally, because all software has the potential to make different decisions, should I just be installing BOTH versions??? That's an awful lot of font files to have installed. I was going through and just picking the green O files (for the random reason that they seemed to load faster), but then some of the blue O files looked better on the screen. So confusing to me.

I guess I'll just pick whichever one previews the best for now, and then I can always go and switch which one is installed in MainType if I find I'm having issues along the way somewhere. It's giving me anxiety, though, feeling like I'm not understanding enough about what I'm doing.

Thank you,
~Kimberley