OpenType Fonts

For years there were, basically, two types of fonts you had to concern yourself with if you were a graphic designer: PostScript and TrueType. Sure, there were other types of fonts, but those were the two types of fonts most often used by designers. Then along came OpenType.

OpenType fonts are the result of a collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft. Essentially, they took TrueType fonts and "opened" the format to include PostScript font data. An OpenType font can have only TrueType data, only PostScript data, or both font types in one font.

The specs for the OpenType format became public in 1997, and the first OpenType fonts were introduced in 2000.

• Fonts are cross-platform (they work on both Mac & Pc — yeah!)
• Fonts can contain large character sets of up to 65,000-plus glyphs
• Fonts can be compressed efficiently
• Fonts an contain a wide range of extended characters, including ligatures, fractions, old-style-numbers, titling caps, historical characters, and swash characters
• Fonts use a single font file for all of its outline, metric, and bitmap data, making file management simpler

Well, just where are you going to get your fonts? And what about free fonts?

Unless you're looking at the Adobe fonts, it isn't all that easy to find OpenType fonts (with Linotype fonts being the exception). And it definitely isn't easy to find free fonts.

Even if you do find OpenType fonts, will your software support it? Adobe InDesign 2 supports all the features of OpenType. Most other software doesn't. You may be able to use your OpenType fonts, but you won't be able to take advantage of the extended character set.

So what's a designer to do?

If you're like me, and you've been designing for a while, you've probably invested a fair amount of money in good, quality fonts. I'm not about to reinvest that money in a font format that has yet to have wide support in the graphic design industry.

On the other hand, if you're a new designer, you should probably go ahead and invest in good, quality OpenType fonts. They will work with your service bureau and your printer, and you can't beat having fonts available to both Windows and Mac.

Will OpenType become the font of the future? It's difficult to say. It sure has a lot of promise, just like the PNG graphic format for the Web. But like PNG, it hasn't garnered a whole lot of software support despite being available for years.