FreeType

FreeType is a popular software development library, used to render text on to bitmaps and provides support for other font-related operations. The FreeType font rasterization engine is free and open source software with the source code dual-licensed under a BSD-like license and the GPL. FreeType support a number of font formats, including TrueType, Type 1, and OpenType and "is designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable while capable of producing high-quality output (glyph images)."

Features

Hinting

File formats

Adobe's new SING Glyphlet format was introduced in FreeType 2.2. Bit 1 in the "head" table of TrueType fonts is supported in FreeType 2.2. Support for SFNT cmap 13 table format is added in 2.3.10. Support for OpenType collections and CFF fonts within an SFNT wrapper are added in 2.4.11.

History

FreeType was in 1996 created by David Turner to render TrueType fonts, including an interpreter for handling TrueType bytecode. Originally written in the Pascal programming language it was ported in 1997 by Robert Wilhelm to C. Later, Werner Lemberg joined the team who is until today maintainer of Freetype.