Historical past of PostScript, TrueType, and OpenType

When the Mac first appeared in 1984 it radically modified the way in which print and sort have been created and managed. Gone have been the times of manually setting sort on a printing press or hand-designing graphics on a designer’s easel.

The Mac delivered WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design and format utilizing (on the time) revolutionary software program equivalent to Aldus Pagemaker, and from Adobe Programs, Inc. Illustrator.

In 1986 Apple launched the Mac Plus, an upgraded model of the unique Mac – now with 1MB of RAM. It additionally launched the LaserWriter – the world’s first mass-market shopper desktop laser printer.

Each have been hits and instantly grew to become the Mac’s killer app. Designers, print media, and information retailers purchased the Mac and LaserWriter and designers may now design print publications, import textual content and graphics, and prepare objects on pages onscreen just by clicking and dragging.

Adobe’s preliminary graphic design merchandise reside on immediately: Illustrator remains to be the main definitive skilled vector illustration app for designers and print publishers, and considered one of Adobe’s different apps – InDesign, is definitely the successor to Aldus Pagemaker.

Adobe purchased Aldus, then later purchased one other firm from the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties known as Macromedia, which made the now-defunct Flash, and different apps. Aldus additionally had a presentation design app known as Persuasion which was a bit like how Apple’s Keynote is immediately.

A number of different variations of the Mac adopted together with the SE, SE/30, the Mac II (the primary coloration Mac), Iici, and a bunch of later coloration machines.

Early within the 1980’s Adobe Programs had already been engaged on a web page format and outline language known as PostScript. Apple and Aldus adopted PostScript as did many laser printer producers.

Each Apple LaserWriter got here with a PostScript interpreter in-built, in addition to ROMs containing restricted units of Adobe’s PostScript fonts, known as Kind 1 fonts. Further Kind 1 fonts may very well be put in within the Fonts folder on the unique Mac OS, together with bitmapped screen-only suitcase font recordsdata.

While you went to print a file in your LaserWriter, Mac OS would obtain any extra wanted Kind 1 fonts to the printer’s reminiscence and the PostScript interpreter would rasterize them into textual content on the web page.

Unique Kind 1 fonts: Kind 1 ‘define’ fonts at high, a bitmaped ‘suitcase’ font file for display screen show, and Adobe Font Metrics recordsdata.

Sadly, the unique Mac OS did not help PostScript in its API immediately.

Adobe’s early success was largely constructed on the again of PostScript and Illustrator, with many extra merchandise to observe. Adobe made billions off the PostScript licensing royalties Apple and different printer producers needed to pay to place PostScript of their printers.

Third-party Kind 1 font distributors quickly appeared. The desktop publishing market (DTP) exploded, and Apple and Adobe have been on their option to mega-success.

Apple and the Mac had badly wanted a killer app on the time and the mix of the LaserWriter, the Mac Plus, and PostScript have been it. The truth is, if not for desktop publishing and the LaserWriter, Apple won’t have survived.

One among Adobe’s first Mac software program merchandise – Kind Reunion.

PostScript is a really easy-to-read English-like language that describes objects to be drawn on a web page. Instructions are brief and easy and normally describe paths (known as Bezier paths in arithmetic), attributes of paths, colours, line sizes (strokes), fills, and different objects.

The Kind 1 font normal did the identical, however for fonts – complicated Bezier paths have been used to attract font outlines, and thickness in addition to graphics objects (which we’ll get to in a second).

As a result of PostScript was terse and text-based, vector picture recordsdata and fonts may very well be described whereas retaining file sizes small.

Illustrator is predicated on these identical ideas – utilizing PostScript to attract and show shapes, though when displayed on early Mac screens the objects needed to be transformed to the Mac’s crude bitmapped-based drawing engine, known as QuickDraw. The unique Mac by no means had true WYSIWYG however it did come shut.

Steve Job’s second firm, NeXT, Inc. made newer computer systems beginning in 1989 which did use Show PostScript for true WYSIWYG show on-screen and on the printed web page. NeXT additionally made and offered its personal small PostScript-based laser printer.

One of many first apps ported to NeXT machines was Adobe’s Illustrator.

A number of extra LaserWriter fashions from Apple adopted, every with extra options, extra inside reminiscence and fonts and sooner efficiency at decrease costs.

Mac customers cherished the benefit with which fonts may very well be put in, eliminated, and downloaded into and from the Mac. The complete system was straightforward, seamless, and simply labored.

Later Adobe made and offered extra Mac PostScript-releated software program equivalent to Adobe Kind Supervisor (ATM), Kind-On-Name CD-ROMs with unlockable fonts, and font collections on 3.5-inch floppy disks which match early Mac floppy drives.

An unique Adobe Kind 1 Galahad font diskette, and Adobe Kind Supervisor 4.0 for Home windows.

ATM basically tried so as to add Show PostScript to early Macs in graphic design apps with various ranges of success. It learn and rendered Kind 1 fonts on the Mac’s show by utilizing vector graphics transformed to bitmapped fonts, or had corresponding bitmap fonts put in alongside Kind 1 fonts for printing.

Whereas in lots of instances this improved fonts on the Mac’s show, there have been drawbacks – specifically efficiency – and generally sort laid out on a web page with ATM would not precisely match when ATM was turned off.

The unique Mac fashions did not help PostScript fonts immediately, and in a while customers may set up each bitmapped display screen fonts in addition to PostScript fonts which might be downloaded to a laser printer at print-time. That is the place the “Fonts” folders in macOS initially got here from.

Adobe Programs’ co-founder, John Warnock who handed away in August on the age of 82, initiated the PostScript challenge at Adobe.

Customers cherished the Mac font system, however as increasingly more fonts proliferated, the font storage system rapidly received out of hand. Worse, most Kind 1 fonts had a number of variants, or faces, in every font which rapidly made the Mac’s font menu unwieldy.

Later an organization known as Fifth Era Programs made a Mac utility known as Suitcase and Suitcase II which made font administration simpler. Symantec purchased Fifth Era Programs and Suitcase, after which one other firm (Extensis) purchased Suitcase from Symantec.

You may nonetheless get the “last model” of Extensis Suitcase Fusion on their web site for obtain for macOS.

Symantec’s model 3 of Suitcase on floppy disk circa 1996.

PostScript itself may be very straightforward to grasp simply by studying. Most PostScript recordsdata retailer their contents (code) as plain textual content. This is a small pattern:

$F2psDict /mtrx matrix put

/clp {closepath} bind def

Bezier curves are based mostly on splines – paths described by polynomials and “knots” or factors. Every path is described by two or extra factors, with two ends and a number of factors in between. Splines interpolate the trail alongside the factors to realize a easy steady form.

A font described utilizing splines as detailed on the FontForge web site.

A number of fashionable font instruments together with FontForge let you design and export font recordsdata in a way just like Illustrator drawings.

Adobe selected splines for PostScript as a result of whatever the show or print decision, splines can describe shapes at any scale. The information for splines may be very compact as a result of as an alternative of describing complete shapes, solely factors should be saved.

Adobe Illustrator permits designers so as to add, take away, lower, paste, and reshape splines by dragging management factors alongside them to alter their shapes.

On the time, though the unique Mac’s show was very low decision (72 dpi), laser printers have been already printing at 300, 600, 1200, and 2400 dpi. The Mac’s built-in font system was bitmap-only, and Adobe’s used vector graphics described by math.

As quickly as Adobe launched Illustrator, Aldus got here out with its personal spline-based drawing program known as Freehand, which was additionally wildly fashionable with designers.

An early model of Aldus Freehand, which was just like Illustrator.

Within the late Eighties, Apple noticed the restrictions of its font system and what Adobe had completed, and created a brand new normal known as ‘SFNT’. On the identical time, it developed a brand new sort normal, TrueType, which the Mac nonetheless helps immediately.

SFNT was designed to be open and a container for different font sorts and which helps PostScript, TrueType, OpenType, Net Open Font Format (WOFF), and others.

Nonetheless, as a consequence of early use of C programming language code and design selections, the utmost variety of characters that may be included in an SFNT desk is 65,536 (the utmost worth of an unsigned brief integer variable in C).

As soon as Apple launched System 7 in 1991, which additionally included coloration on the Mac for the primary time, customers may now set up TrueType fonts just by dragging them to the Fonts folder contained in the System Folder, or into suitcases.

Apple’s System 7 – offered at retail on floppies. Be aware the TrueType font icon within the decrease left nook.

In this video Apple worker #8 Chris Espinoza who joined the corporate at age fourteen launched System 7. Chris remains to be at Apple.

Previous to utilizing System 7, Mac customers had to make use of an Apple-provided app known as Font/DA Mover to put in and take away fonts.

TrueType simplified the Mac’s font system. A scalable vector, or define font normal, TrueType eliminates the necessity for separate bitmap fonts and shops fonts in a single file.

Gone have been the times of getting to fret about putting in matching Kind 1 font recordsdata for every put in bitmapped font on a Mac.

Microsoft quickly added TrueType help to Microsoft Home windows, which remains to be supported immediately. In response to TrueType turning into a brand new open font normal, Adobe introduced it could open the Kind 1 normal as nicely.

Adobe founder John Warnock decried TrueType as an affordable imitation of Adobe’s know-how.

Apple additionally later developed a further sort normal for its new model of QuickDraw known as QuickDraw GX. Dubbed TrueType GX (later referred to as Apple Superior Typography) it by no means absolutely caught on – and neither did QuickDraw GX – being upstaged by a number of new mid-1990’s rendering applied sciences equivalent to OpenType, OpenGL and others.

Apple additionally had a corresponding 3D rendering know-how known as QuickDraw 3D which additionally failed.

Since most of AAT’s options are actually supported in OpenType, the continuation of AAT improvement wasn’t thought of crucial.

Across the identical time the then-new Unicode open normal was launched to take care of globalization, non-western languages, and right-to-left languages equivalent to Arabic and others on computer systems.

Apple created Apple Kind Providers for Unicode Imaging (ATUSI) for Mac OS 8.5 which shipped as a System Extension within the OS to supply worldwide language rendering utilizing Unicode.

Previous to ATSUI, Mac OS used an Apple-specific normal known as WorldScript, which shoehorned non-western languages and fonts into System 7.1 by way of “Language Kits” which have been extra software program parts that would plug in and supply help for different languages.

Apple’s Japanese Language Package.

Apple deprecated all help for ATSUI and WorldScript in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard – and help for Mac OS X’s ATS.framework (Apple Kind Providers) in Xcode 4.6 in 2012. Right now, most textual content dealt with on macOS and iOS is dealt with by Apple’s Core Textual content framework.

Mark David, considered one of WorldScript’s builders helped discovered the Unicode Consortium which remains to be round immediately.

In 1996 Microsoft developed its personal font normal known as TrueType Open (to not be confused with ClearType), which was later renamed OpenType which nonetheless exists immediately. In 2005 OpenType started the method of turning into an open normal and is now detailed in ISO Commonplace ISO/IEC 14496-22 (MPEG-4 Half 22), now formally known as Open Font Format.

There are additionally extra normal extensions for Asian (CJK) fonts, which basically have extra complicated glyphs (shapes) than Western languages. Early on Adobe established its personal font extensions for the Japanese language referred to as Adobe-Japan1.

As early as 2002 Adobe had transformed its complete Kind 1 font assortment to OpenType. In consequence, TrueType and OpenType are nonetheless the de-facto requirements for sort on computer systems immediately.

Adobe even has a free font obtain web page on its web site for some fonts. It additionally has a fonts market in its Artistic Cloud software program, from which you should buy fonts for obtain.

In 2015 Microsoft added OpenType help for coloration fonts, emoji, and Scable Vector Graphics (SVG) to the usual.

In 2009 the Net Open Font Format (WOFF) was submitted by the Mozilla Basis, Opera Software program, and Microsoft to the WC3 for approval as an open net normal. Designed to remove font obtain latency and conflicts with domestically put in fonts, WOFF additionally supplies font compression for sooner web page rendering.

WOFF is an SFNT-based wrapper font format based mostly on TrueType and OpenType.

Since model 1.4, OpenType has allowed font collections – which might comprise a number of typefaces in a single file (just like the unique Mac’s suitcase recordsdata).

macOS started supporting font collections just a few years in the past, and when you look within the /Customers/~/Library folder in fashionable variations of macOS you will notice each a Fonts, and a FontCollections folder.

There’s additionally a Fonts folder within the /Library folder on the root of your Startup Disk.

If you happen to set up fonts into the Fonts folder in /Library they are going to be obtainable to all customers on a Mac. If you happen to set up them into the Fonts or FontCollections folders in a person’s /Library folder, the fonts can be obtainable to that person solely.

If you happen to double-click an .otf (OpenType) or .ttf (TrueType) font file within the Mac’s Finder, it would open in Apple’s Font E-book app and show it in its personal window. You can too use this window to interchange fonts.

You can too view, edit, and create font collections within the Font E-book app. Font E-book works kind of like the unique Suitcase app labored on the Mac Plus and SE, however higher.

Font E-book has many extra fascinating little options equivalent to the power to view fonts by date added, sort, by title, pattern, language, or typeface view, and you’ll step by way of every typeface variant in a font assortment.

You can too scale font samples utilizing the window’s slider management.

Apple’s Font E-book app in motion.

In 1996 David Turner began the FreeType challenge, which is a rasterization know-how for rendering fonts onto bitmaps, just like Microsoft’s ClearType. FreeType was later sued by Apple for patent infringement for some patents associated to TrueType, however these patents have since expired.

FreeType can be utilized in Android, ChromeOS, and the Home windows 95 clone working system ReactOS. It is also utilized in elements of the Java Growth Package from Oracle.

Graphite is a great font rendering know-how based mostly on TrueType, however which incorporates superior options equivalent to context-aware rendering, glyph substitution, and built-in rendering data which implies solely the fonts themselves are wanted for rendering in any language on any system.

Graphite is generally used on Home windows and Linux techniques and is offered on macOS, however it is not extensively used on the Mac since Core Textual content supplies related help.

In 2022 Adobe Programs introduced it was ending help for PostScript Kind 1 fonts. This had been coming for a very long time, given TrueType and OpenType’s now dominance as font requirements.

Adobe additionally has new basic rendering engines (RIPs) for each file printing and sharing and for industrial printing known as Adobe Embedded Print Engine, and Adobe PDF Print Engine, respectively.

Adobe’s Kind 1 help formally got here to an finish in January, 2023. You should use Font E-book to see when you nonetheless have any Kind 1 fonts put in in your Mac.

In 2023 Apple eliminated practically all help for PostScript from macOS 14 Sonoma and iOS. The Preview app not has the power to open or show PostScript (.ps) recordsdata, nor print them immediately.

From a developer perspective, practically all API-level paths to PostScript have additionally been eliminated. Core Graphics’s CGPSConverter is deprecated, and NSImageRep subclasses not help PostScript or EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) recordsdata.

PMPrinterPrintWithFile not accepts PostScript recordsdata for print queues, and drawing contexts not help displaying PostScript.

There are nonetheless just a few issues you are able to do with .ps recordsdata – for now. For instance, each Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator can nonetheless import .ps recordsdata, however when you do they get transformed to graphics and also you lose any textual content as textual content.

Oddly, Mac’s print system does nonetheless help some PostScript features – undoubtedly as a result of there are various PostScript printers nonetheless in use and can be for a while. From the usual macOS print dialog in apps you’ll be able to choose Save as Postscript from the popup menu on the backside which can produce a .ps file it can save you to disk.

You may nonetheless print paperwork to .ps recordsdata in macOS.

You probably have a PostScript-enabled printer, or one which incorporates PostScript emulation, you’ll be able to nonetheless print .ps and EPS recordsdata to it by dragging them to the Print Heart queue window out of your macOS Desktop.

To open a print queue in your Mac, you will want to pick your printer beneath the Printers & Scanners tab within the System Settings app, click on in your printer beneath Printers, then click on the Printer Queue… button to open macOS’s Print Heart.

One firm, Artiflex Software program, Inc. has its personal PostScript interpreter and libraries known as GhostScript that are over thirty years outdated and nonetheless work on most fashionable computing platforms together with macOS, Home windows, and different UNIX-based techniques.

GhostScript is unbiased of each Adobe and Apple and is a standalone product. It might probably additionally print PDF recordsdata.

You may obtain GhostScript from its web site, or set up it in your Mac utilizing the Homebrew package deal supervisor.

Apple has a full checklist of fonts included in macOS Sonoma and the checklist is now fairly lengthy. You may add and take away fonts with Font E-book.

You can too view all of Apple’s unique SFNT developer documentation on the web archive which covers all the unique information about font tables, four-character codes, file sorts, and TrueType GX.

Adobe additionally initially revealed a number of books on PostScript within the late 1980’s by way of Addison Wesley Publishing.

For a enjoyable peek into the unique world of the Macintosh’s improvement, together with Quickdraw and fonts, try folklore.org by Andy Hertzfeld. Andy labored on the unique Mac, and helped outline and code the Finder and desktop metaphor as we all know them immediately.

He is additionally written an incredible companion guide Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Nice Story of How the Mac Was Made, which is offered on Amazon.

There are literally many different font codecs and requirements obtainable immediately and we’ve got solely touched on the main ones. The topic of pc typography is huge and complicated. Studying the complete historical past of sort on computer systems and the technical particulars of each typography and printing is a frightening job.

PostScript and Kind 1 fonts revolutionized how we design and print paperwork and adjusted the world. Nothing lasts without end and though PostScript was an incredible know-how, issues change as a long time go – and now TrueType and OpenType are the indeniable requirements for sort on fashionable computer systems.

PostScript will go down in historical past as one of many world’s most wonderful technological achievements.