4 ms·

That's the difference between ttf and otf? And that's why certain fonts look slightly different between platforms! This is a serious revelation to me. Thank yo

That's the difference between ttf and otf? And that's why certain fonts look slightly different between platforms! This is a serious revelation to me. Thank you. I've been having to switch between my Mac laptop, Linux workstation, Windows 10 workstation, and Windows 10 Amazon Workspace a lot. It's been frustrating seeing the small differences but being unable to really figure out what was going on.

mmmrk 7y ago
The primary visible difference is the way hinting works in both formats. TrueType-flavored fonts (.ttf) must be explicitly programmed; how good this looks depends on in which decade the font was hinted and how much money, time and skill went into it. Postscript-flavored fonts (.otf) can be outfitted with some hinting metadata and have an automatic hinting tool run on them, applying the hints is then completely up to the renderer. This has the disadvantage that the designer has less control over the end-result and the advantage that the renderer can interpret hints differently if some text display technology/stack changes. I personally find Adobe's .otf renderer in FreeType the best compromise between aesthetically pleasing and legible and can only recommend using exclusively .otf fonts on FreeType platforms.
hsivonen 7y ago
The format of outlines is only difference between .ttf and .otf, yes. .ttf has quardratic Bézier curves and hinting is done by interpreted programs (on Windows; TrueType has generate hints at run-time). .otf has cubic Bézier curves and declarative hints. The outline format of .otf comes from Adobe Type 1 fonts (.otf really is just .ttf with outline format taken from Type 1), so the .otf outline format is the older one. Apple created TrueType after licensing talks with Adobe failed long ago. .otf is generally more compact in terms of font file size than .ttf. Really the only reason to stick with .ttf is the rasterizer situation on Windows and outlines traveling from Linux and Mac to Windows in PDFs.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  OpenType also supports the TrueType glyph format [0], and it's the dominant glyph format in most OTF files I could find. Really, OpenType is just CFF / Type 2 Fonts and TrueType smushed together in a single file. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/glyf https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/gl...

mmmrk 7y ago

The primary visible difference is the way hinting works in both formats. TrueType-flavored fonts (.ttf) must be explicitly programmed; how good this looks depends on in which decade the font was hinted and how much money, time and skill went into it. Postscript-flavored fonts (.otf) can be outfitted with some hinting metadata and have an automatic hinting tool run on them, applying the hints is then completely up to the renderer. This has the disadvantage that the designer has less control over the end-result and the advantage that the renderer can interpret hints differently if some text display technology/stack changes. I personally find Adobe's .otf renderer in FreeType the best compromise between aesthetically pleasing and legible and can only recommend using exclusively .otf fonts on FreeType platforms.

hsivonen 7y ago

The format of outlines is only difference between .ttf and .otf, yes. .ttf has quardratic Bézier curves and hinting is done by interpreted programs (on Windows; TrueType has generate hints at run-time). .otf has cubic Bézier curves and declarative hints. The outline format of .otf comes from Adobe Type 1 fonts (.otf really is just .ttf with outline format taken from Type 1), so the .otf outline format is the older one. Apple created TrueType after licensing talks with Adobe failed long ago. .otf is generally more compact in terms of font file size than .ttf. Really the only reason to stick with .ttf is the rasterizer situation on Windows and outlines traveling from Linux and Mac to Windows in PDFs.

Jasper_ 7y ago
OpenType also supports the TrueType glyph format [0], and it's the dominant glyph format in most OTF files I could find. Really, OpenType is just CFF / Type 2 Fonts and TrueType smushed together in a single file. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/glyf https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/gl...