OpenType is more reliable, compatible and better supported than TrueType But this would be completely pointless since there is nothing to gain from such a conversion, unless the font foundry itself decides to really add additional glyphs and features. Often people ask, how they can convert old TrueType fonts to OpenType. So as you can see: Drawing a strict line between TrueType and OpenType as two separate formats often doesn’t make any sense at all. You can turn a TrueType font into an OpenType font by just adding one fi-ligature as an OpenType feature. But then again: Having an OpenType font doesn’t mean that all those features and extended character sets are really there. Or the AALT feature which allows you to access all alternative versions of a glyph in the Glyph Palette of InDesign. Instead of just accessing them via their Unicode, they can now be accessed using OpenType features, like the LIGA feature, which (for example) automatically replaces every instance of f and i with an fi-ligature. What OpenType really introduced was a new way to access these larger character sets. The older TrueType fonts also supported Unicode and larger character sets. OpenType with its Unicode support clearly solved this dilemma, but then again: this was not something that was developed specifically for OpenType. Different font files of the same typeface (like Helvetica CE/Greek/CYR) had to be used in one document and without these fonts installed the text could not be displayed properly. This made setting different languages or writing systems a pain.
PS VS OTF VS TTF MAC
The old PostScript Type1 fonts usually had just an 8 bit encoding like Mac Roman, which only allowed to address 256 characters. OpenType fonts have a larger character set But since OpenType is directly based on the file structure of a (Windows) TrueType font, OpenType is also cross-platform compatible. So platform compatibility was made possible by this change from Apple, not by the introduction of a new font format.
PS VS OTF VS TTF WINDOWS
Since MacOS 10 the new Mac operating system also supports data fork fonts, such as Windows TrueType fonts. This was in large parts due to the way Apple stored font information in the resource fork of a file.
PS VS OTF VS TTF PC
Wrong! Until MacOS 9 both TrueType and PostScript Type1 fonts had to be delivered as separated versions for PC and Mac. OpenType brought cross-platform compatibility It uses the same basic structure as a TrueType font, but with some optional features stored in additional tables within the font. It is directly based on the TrueType specifications, or to be even more precise: it is based on Apple’s SFNT (“Spline Font”) format originally developed for QuickDraw. You can think of OpenType as “TrueType 1.5”. Time to shed some light on this confusing subject …įirst of all, it’s important to know that OpenType is not as new as some marketing claims try to suggest. But even 14 years after its introduction, many users don’t really know what the term OpenType implies and how it differs from other font formats. OpenType is the standard font format of these days.