TrueType
TrueType is a standard for fonts to font display on screens and printers ( engl. "true type": "true writing " or "real letter" ). It is integrated into the operating systems Windows and Mac OS, and available on Unix -like operating systems with FreeType.
TrueType fonts are among the outline fonts. They are not built as opposed to bitmap fonts of individual pixels, but on the principle of vector graphics from contours. Specifically, it is here to quadratic B- splines. The advantage of the vector representation is lossless scalability, that is, the font size is changed as desired. Only when output to different devices, mostly screen and printer, the contours are filled with pixels. The competing, older PostScript font technology from Adobe uses Bezier curves of third degree ( cubic).
The file extension for TrueType fonts in Windows. Ttf or. Ttc, the latter stands for TrueType collection. TTCs are container files that contain multiple fonts; they share many TrueType tables, and so need less storage space.
History
Adobe's patent policy in connection with its PostScript font formats led to the development of the TrueType format. Apple engineers were already working during the late eighties at different vector fonts techniques. The senior engineer Sampo Kaasila presented later TrueType ago - initially under the name Bass (English for perch), which has since been again to Royal (English for royal ) changed. The standard was published in May 1991 by Apple System 7 and later licensed by Microsoft and included in Windows 3.1 in early 1992.
Further developments are so-called " smart font " technologies such as the 1994 published TrueType GX ( from QuickDraw GX ) that lives on today as Apple Advanced Typography (AAT), or even in 1995 announced and with Windows 95 partially published TrueType Open, which to Adobe OpenType was further developed and represents Microsoft's competing alternative to AAT. A free, more " smart font " technology in the wake of TrueType represents Graphite, extends the TrueType backward compatible.