figuring out font technology

Sebastien Sanfilippo

Hi I am trying to understand what runs (behind) font technology.
I made a little chronological table to illustrate my questions
https://titanpad.com/RVsUOjrOPe
If anyone can help filling the gaps that would be great
cheers
Seb

Peter Constable

Fundamentally, it will be bitmaps, beziers and rasterizers, or algorithms for generating or modifying bitmaps or beziers.

Sebastien Sanfilippo

Thanks Peter, thanks Dave, very enlightening. I should know all this stuff but have always found it intimidating 

Simon Cozens

You might find this useful: https://simoncozens.github.io/fonts-and-layout//opentype.html

Sebastien Sanfilippo

Thanks Simon this is a great read!

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

For a convenient look into the guts of OT fonts also OTM (LIght) can be used.

Mark Simonson

Simon: One thing you mention in your page about OpenType is that the UPM for TrueType must be a power of 2. It often is, but it doesn't have to be. It helped to do it that way with the slow processors we had back when TrueType was introduced, so that was the recommendation. You also mention 1024 as being a typical TrueType UPM. That may be, but the standard value is 2048, or at least used to be.

Simon Cozens

Thanks Mark! I'll fix it - if you spot any more things like that, please file an issue. I'm planning to flesh this out to a full book; when it's done I'll get a fuller community review, but comments are very welcome!