TrueType Font System: The Company Behind the Mathematical Definition of Letters

Apple created the outline font standard TRUETYPE in the late 1980s.

The first TrueType outline fonts were copies of the Apple LaserWriter’s original PostScript fonts.

Additionally, Apple added scalable TrueType outline fonts in place of some of the bitmap fonts used in the graphical user interface of earlier Macintosh System versions.

TrueType was licensed by Apple to Microsoft.

TrueType was the most widely used font format on older Mac OS systems, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows until Microsoft incorporated it into Windows 3.1.

TrueType has an independent implementation thanks to David Turner’s FreeType project.

In TrueType fonts, the character outlines are composed of quadratic Bézier curves and straight line segments.

‘Hints’ from the glyphs are processed by programs running inside the font in TrueType systems.

An ’embeddable flag field’ that indicates whether the author permits embedding of the font file is one of the simplest forms of digital rights management that the TrueType format supports.

Creation Date

After development, the system was eventually made available as TrueType with the May 1991 release of Mac System 7.

The original PostScript fonts of the Apple LaserWriter were replicated by the four-weight families of Times Roman, Helvetica, Courier, and the pi font ‘Symbol’ in addition to the first TrueType outline fonts.

Since Adobe was starting to license printer controllers that could directly compete with Apple’s LaserWriter printers, Apple and Adobe were able to extend their agreements for the use of PostScript in Apple printers, which resulted in lower royalty payments to Adobe.

Apple gave Microsoft a free licensing of TrueType in order to guarantee its widespread use.

Microsoft integrated TrueType into the Windows 3.1 software.

Original Mac System Font

The original Mac OS came with about twelve fonts (versions 1–9). Susan Kare designed the majority of the original Macintosh icons in addition to the fonts that came with the device, with the exception of Bill Atkinson’s Venice typeface.

System fonts for Mac OS were Chicago for menus and window titles and Geneva for Finder icons from System 1 through Mac OS 7.6. However, from System 7 onwards, users could change the fonts for Finder icons using the ‘Views’ control panel.

System 1–7.6 came with Chicago (sans-serif) as the standard Macintosh system font, also seen on previous iPod models’ LCD screens.

Geneva (sans-serif) is a typeface found in all Mac OS X versions that is intended for small point sizes. Its name indicates that the Swiss typeface Helvetica served as inspiration. Old World ROM Macs come with a built-in nine-point Geneva.

Monaco is a fixed-width, sans-serif, monospaced font that works well at 9–12 points. Old World ROM Macs come with ten-point Monaco built-in.

Cambria Math Font

Cambria was created to look good when printed at small sizes and to be readable on screens.

Its proportions and spacing are extremely uniform.

Horizontal serifs are tiny and serve to highlight stroke endings rather than drawing attention to themselves, whereas vertical and horizontal hairlines and serifs are generally stronger.

There is a wide range of math and science symbols added to the standard weight.

An international team of experts closely supervised the design of the Greek and Cyrillic with the goal of creating a new standard for multi-script type design history.

Typeface of Windows Movie Maker

The Segoe Print font family was created by Carl Crossgrove, James Grieshaber, and Karl Leuthold and is based on the handwriting of Brian Allen, a worker at Monotype Imaging. There are two fonts in the family, each in two weights, without italics. Character sets from WGL are supported. With Windows Vista and later, it is preinstalled. It is well-known for being the font that Windows Movie Maker uses by default for titles.

A monospace character version of Segoe UI is called Segoe UI Mono. It can handle Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Thai, Eastern European, and Latin characters as well as symbols, geometric shapes, and drawing elements. There are two fonts in the family, each in two weights, without italics. For Windows 8 and later, this font serves as the system kernel.

Windows 7 introduced a new font called Segoe UI Symbol, which replaces Ogham and Runic glyphs with new scripts and symbols like Braille and Deseret.

Based on the handwriting of Brian Allen, Carl Crossgrove created the Segoe Script font family, which features extended strokes typical of cursive handwriting. The manufacturer of it is Monotype Imaging. The unlinked letters can be accessed by utilizing the stylistic alternate OpenType feature. There are two fonts in the family, each in two weights, without italics. Character sets from WGL are supported. With Windows Vista and later, it is preinstalled.

Steve Matteson and Jim Ford created the symbol-encoded chess font known as Segoe Chess. Included with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 is Segoe Chess 1.00.