OpenType and TrueType

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David Webber
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:33 pm

OpenType and TrueType

Post by David Webber »

[First thanks to Erwin for the recent info on my 'Experiments with Kerning' thread - I'm working on it, and will respond in due course.]

But now another two questions:

I can export a font with open type features or without. I'm starting to do it with as I come to terms with ligatures etc. And as I'm doing that, I am giving the exported file a .otf extension.

1. Does this make any difference? If I export it as .ttf but including open type features, is it still open type?

2. I understand that Open Type fonts can contain either glyphs conforming to the truetype design OR glyphs conforming to the postscript design. (And that they were designed like that to keep both Adobe and Microsoft happy.) Are the fonts created with FontCreator 7 always exported with TrueType glyphs? (Even if I originally imported a font which had PostScript glyphs?)

The reason I ask is that, up to now, I have been programming using the old Windows GDI. I wanted to check if using the newer "GDI plus" library makes any difference in the treatment of kerning pairs. But in the small print of the documentation, it says that GDI plus cannot handle postscript-based Open Type fonts.

Dave
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: OpenType and TrueType

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

  1. The extension makes no difference — but it's a convenient way to distinguish the font types in Windows Explorer, so I name fonts with an *.otf extension if they contain OpenType features. A *.ttf extension will work just the same.
  2. FontCreator always converts Postscript outlines to Truetype outlines on opening a font. That's still true in FC8.0, but now it can export CFF fonts with postscript outlines.
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David Webber
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:33 pm

Re: OpenType and TrueType

Post by David Webber »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:
  1. The extension makes no difference — but it's a convenient way to distinguish the font types in Windows Explorer, so I name fonts with an *.otf extension if they contain OpenType features. A *.ttf extension will work just the same.
  2. FontCreator always converts Postscript outlines to Truetype outlines on opening a font. That's still true in FC8.0, but now it can export CFF fonts with postscript outlines.
Thanks - that's very useful.

Dave
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