CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Outline Font Formats

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Currently, the two most commonly used and encountered outline font technologies are

PostScript and TrueType. ese have been eectively merged into a newer font format

know as OpenType. In terms of PostScript and TrueType outlines, specically the way

in which the glyphs are represented, their primary dierence lies in that PostScript uses

Bézier curves, which are also known as cubic splines, and TrueType uses quadratic splines.

Exactly what this means, and how they are dierent, is well beyond the scope of this book,

but it is useful to note that Bézier curves require fewer control points to represent the

same contours. is generally leads to fonts that are smaller, and easier to transfer, and

that require less disk storage space. Most users honestly do not care on what underlying

font technology their fonts are based, so long as they achieve the desired results. In other

words, users are happy as long as their fonts work as expected. e vast majority of users

are—and honestly should be—insulated from knowing the details of the underlying font

format.

PostScript Font Formats

PostScript is a powerful page-description language backed by a complete programming

language. As a programming language, PostScript is syntactically similar to Forth—both

are stack-based languages. As a page-description language, PostScript supports both

graphics and text, a