TTF/OTF packaging thoughts?

[Gustavo Ferreira]

On Jul 23, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> Le mercredi 23 juillet 2008 à 08:26 -0400, Jon Stanley a écrit :
>> On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 4:53 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
>
>>> 3. That being said, the right solution would seem to be obvious.  
>>> Just
>>> use TTF only for quadratic fonts, and OTF only for cubic fonts. Long
>>> term most fonts will probably be OTF only (given it's a little  
>>> better
>>> than TTF for new fonts).
>>
>> /me new to this whole fonts game - unsure of what's meant here :)
>
> The only significant functionnal difference between OpenType CFF (OTF)
> and OpenType TrueType (TTF) nowadays is that CFF allows cubic splines
> (curves expressed with third-order equations as in a⋅x³ + b⋅y²  
> + c) and
> TTF only supports quadratic (b⋅y² + c)

screen optimisation strategy is another significant difference  
between the two formats.

truetype fonts contain instructions, active information which tells  
the rasterizer exactly how each pixel should be drawn on screen at a  
given ppem size. postscript/opentype cff fonts contain hints, passive  
information which is interpreted by the rasterizer.

maybe this difference is not significant under linux/free type, but  
it is huge for windows users.