Adobe typography definitions

The OpenType format is the result of merging two existing formats — Type 1 and TrueType fonts- so it is important to retain the advantages of both. You can continue working as you always have.

OpenType works seamlessly alongside both TrueType and Type 1 fonts. OpenType fonts simply provide more power, since they offer extended language support and advanced typographic features on platforms and applications that support extended OpenType capabilities. OpenType support consists of three types: basic OpenType support the fonts work like any other fonts ; Unicode support access to extended language character sets ; and OpenType layout support support for advanced typographic features.

Some operating systems or operating system extensions can support for one or more of these, but support for Unicode and layout features requires that an application be programmed to provide this functionality. OpenType is based on the Unicode encoding standard, which can support virtually any or all world languages. Font developers interested in tools can also contact us. The decision to work together came from a desire to provide the best solution for customers, and to provide an environment for future joint innovations.

Both companies agree that merging the Type 1 and TrueType formats is the best solution for customers. The two font standards can now be supported seamlessly on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Both companies have licensed their respective font rasterizers, font production tools, and conversion software. One direct result is native support for Type 1 and OpenType fonts in Windows The application is designed to create simulated glyphs for non-OpenType fonts. Either the application doesn't support OpenType layout and substitution features, or it doesn't support the particular feature you're trying to use.

Contact the application vendor to let the company know you want this feature to be supported in a future version. As long as your computer is set up to use OpenType fonts, and the server is accessible to your computer, you can use them over a network as well. In addition, the same OpenType fonts can be used on both Macintosh and Windows systems that are connected to the network.

However, you should check the terms of your font license agreement to make sure that you are licensed to use the fonts over a network. Be sure you are not exceeding the number of users permitted by the license.

First released in , the multiple master font format was an incredible advance in type technology. In , Adobe unveiled the next great leap forward: Opentype. Developed in conjunction with Microsoft, OpenType uses the same cross-platform font file on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms, providing more reliable document portability. This one font file can also contain an expanded glyph set that allows for extended language support and integrated access to advanced typographic features.

Below is a list of the multiple master fonts formerly available from Adobe and their corresponding OpenType packages. A cross-platform font file format jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft, OpenType is an extension of the TrueType sfnt format that can now support OpenType CFF font data and new typographic features. In Windows , XP, and Vista, one can double-click on an OpenType font to get a sample sheet that indicates what kind of outlines the font file has.

In general, both "flavors" of OpenType are equally supported in Adobe applications and in the PostScript language. Because both flavors share the same structures for multi-lingual support and advanced OpenType layout features, it is usually easy for applications and operating systems to support both flavors equally well. Unicode is a platform-independent character encoding standard that maps each character in a font to a unique value that is used to access that character.

As a result, the pi and symbol characters in OpenType fonts are not accessible in most applications from normal keyboards. For more information on these issues consult the pi font info PDF. For these fonts, using the OpenType fraction layout feature can help access these fractions but no others. Fonts in the second category tend to have thirds and eighths fractions as well as the basic three.

For these fonts, one can use the OpenType numerator and denominator features to access the numerators and denominators, and either feature will turn a slash character into a fraction bar. Later in the development of OpenType, somebody figured out how to do "arbitrary" fractions, creating the third category. Using the same set of glyphs as fonts in category 2, simply turning on the OT "fractions" can make any fraction at all, even things like 1, When Adobe has had occasion to revise existing "category 2" fonts, we have updated them to "category 3" to support arbitrary fractions.

As of mid, we believe we have updated all such fonts. Note that newer OpenType fonts such as Garamond Premier Pro, Arno Pro, and Hypatia Sans Pro include additional punctuation glyphs period, comma, space, left and right parens in their fraction feature to accommodate languages that use different numerical delimiters.

Note that turning on fraction formatting in category 3 fonts can also affect numbers and punctuation that aren't fractions, so one needs to be careful to apply fraction formatting to only the fractions themselves. Even when using fonts where this is not a problem, one might later change fonts, or use a newer version of a font; therefore Adobe strongly recommends that users adhere to this practice even when using fonts for which globally applying fractions formatting does not cause immediate problems.

The expected behavior in both OpenType and non-OpenType savvy applications is as follows:. The initial release of Garamond Premier Pro has non-marking UpperCase forms as the default behavior in non-OpenType savvy applications. Also, versions of Minion Pro up to 2. This behavior may be added in a future release. However, some applications which perform some or all of the font-handling normally done by the operating system may need to be updated in order to recognize and render OpenType CFF fonts.

Workaround: use Freehand 8 or 9, or run Freehand 10 under OS 9. For many style-linked fonts, if they are accessed directly on the font menu in Freehand 10, they may look correct on screen, but they will not print correctly. This applies only to fonts that are also accessible via a bold or italic style link. Workaround: pick any base-style face from the font menu, but pick any italic or bold styled face using the style popup on the text menu in order to get the correct font in print. The Windows Character Map shows blank spaces or bullets for all undefined characters in an OpenType CFF font, instead of just omitting them and additionally displays glyphs for a number of Eastern and Indic languages that are not present in the fonts.

This can make it more difficult to identify what characters a font supports, because considerable scrolling through the character map may be required. Additionally, although almost all characters may be selected from the character map and pasted correctly into Unicode applications such as Microsoft Office , the f ligatures at FBFB04 may only display in TrueType fonts.

Some OpenType Pro fonts may not type into a Word document correctly. This is occurring most noticeably with Pro fonts that have CE glyphs and sort at the bottom of Word's type menu. When you place the text cursor into the middle of a word or at the end of a line that is already formatted as an OpenType Pro font, the formatting of the word changes to the default MS Word font. When you place the cursor at the end of a line of text and begin typing, all subsequent text will be formatted in the default MS Word font.

Workaround: this can often be fixed by going into Word's Preferences, under Edit options and deselecting "Match Font with Keyboard". A family of fonts appears to be installed. Some of the installed fonts from the family, but not all, appear in the font menu. Specifically, some of the weights are missing, and all of the italic fonts. The problem typically occurs in some applications e. The other "missing" fonts are accessible by using the bold and italic style buttons in each application.

There are two ways to tell which fonts are linked to which. Style-linking is used with fonts of all formats in standard Windows applications. Most Windows applications only show the "base font" of any style-linked group in their font menus. The additional style-linked fonts won't show up separately in the font menu of these applications. Being able to directly pick the style-linked fonts the bold and italic is possible in only a few Windows applications, specifically ones that bypass the operating system for their font-handling including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

In typical Windows applications, there is no way other than the style link to access the style-linked fonts. They don't show up in the menu on their own. If you want to get to the fonts that can be accessed by the bold and italic buttons in these applications, the only way to access them is by use of these "stylings"; there is no alternative.

People who are used to the Mac OS or applications which allow direct access to style-linked fonts often incorrectly: 1 expect that you can always "directly pick" even a style-linked bold or italic font from a font menu in any application; and 2 believe there is something wrong or inferior with using fonts via style links. Using style links does have the limitation that in most applications, if no actual style-linked font exists, the Windows OS will provide a simulated approximation, with no warning that your "base font" is simply being slanted or double-struck to approximate italics or bold.

Without close inspection by zooming in or printing out , it can be difficult to tell the difference on screen. As long as there is a style link, and the linked font is available, the real, style-linked font will be used in the document and in print.

When documents are created in some Mac OS applications are opened in the Windows version of the application, incorrect fonts are displayed. Even though the same fonts are installed on Windows, the Windows version of the application doesn't recognize that the same font is installed.

This is another aspect of the style linking issue described above. To avoid the problem, whenever possible the Mac OS user must select the base font and use the style links to access style-linked fonts, rather than selecting the style-linked fonts bold or italic directly from the font menu.

Background: Most of the information in the style linking section applies for the user on the Mac OS as well, it's just Mac users also have the option of directly selecting the fonts. However, for certain applications, if someone is creating Mac documents that will also be used on Windows, they must use the style links when available, or the Windows version of the application will not be able to correctly identify the font used.

Under certain conditions, OpenType fonts may lose their distinctive icon. In most circumstances, this does not cause problems with the functioning of the fonts. However, one known issue is that fonts put in an Adobe application's own fonts folder or the fonts folder at Applications Support: Adobe may not be recognized by Adobe applications that normally support use of such folders.

Note that doing this may cause you to lose customized changes you have previously made for example, in the Show Info window. Adobe packages its OpenType fonts so that they will get the correct icon when unpacked. If the Type and Creator codes are incorrect or missing, or the Desktop DB is corrupt or damaged, icons may not display properly.

Additionally, moving OpenType fonts from other operating systems, such as Windows or Unix, may damage or eliminate the Mac OS resource fork, which contains the Type and Creator codes, and custom icons.

Mac OS X can use either Type and Creator codes, or file extensions, to determine file types and icons to use. This information is stored in the LS Launch Services preference files.

Keynote and Pages fail to use the kerning values in many OpenType fonts. Adobe is working with Apple to try to address this. This means that OS X cocoa applications which rely on the OS to provide kerning information rather than directly reading the OpenType font see the font as having no kerning pairs. In such applications, with families which offer variant fonts of different optical sizes, such as Display, Subhead and Caption, the "Regular" font may not appear in the Font Palette.

This occurs in Mac OS X up to It has been fixed in Mac OS X This issue is fixed in Mac OS X Mac OS X, issues fixed in This means that OS X native or carbon applications which relied on the OS to provide style linking information will treat the fonts as having no style links.

Therefore bold and italic style buttons will either not work or will create synthesized styles smeared or slanted instead of accessing the correct font. This can have side effects: opening or importing a document authored on an earlier OS with OpenType OTF fonts using style links may result in the correct font not being found. Workaround: For applications using Adobe's common font engine, such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, one can work around this problem by putting the fonts in the application's fonts folder or in the application support:Adobe:Fonts folder.

This issue was fixed in Mac OS X Mac OS X This meant that OS X native or carbon applications which rely on the OS to provide kerning information rather than directly reading the OpenType font would see the font as having no kerning pairs.

This issue did not affect any Adobe applications using Adobe's common font engine, such as InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Also unaffected were any applications which are not yet carbonized, such as PageMaker and FrameMaker. In applications which are carbonized, and still use QuickDraw for on-screen display rather than ATSUI or Adobe's common font engine , some of these characters display as different characters or as undefined. Despite the display problem, the characters do print correctly, to both PostScript and non PostScript devices.

TrueType flavored OpenType fonts. Some select Adobe applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign can use these fonts if they are placed in a "Fonts" folder located inside the main application folder. All applications running on OS X outside of the Classic environment can use the fonts.

Many can also be modified for internal use. To view a list of the specific permissions for all fonts in the Adobe Type Library refer to the Additional License Rights page. If yes, you may embed copies of the font software into your DPS content without any additional license extensions or per-use costs. These extended embedding rights are limited to distribution of such embedded fonts solely as part of your content distributed in Adobe's proprietary file format for DPS ".

The agreement defines how these fonts may be embedded in electronic documents. According to the OpenType specification, four possible permission settings can be included in an OpenType font from most restrictive to least restrictive.

This permission signals that the font or any portion of the font may not be embedded in any electronic document. Fonts with an editable embedding permission can be embedded in electronic documents and the embedded font can then be used by the recipient of the electronic document to view, print and further edit or modify the text and structure of the document in which it is embedded.

These changes or edits can then be saved in the original document. Several fonts in the Adobe Type Library, including all Adobe Originals typefaces, other Adobe-owned typefaces, and certain third-party font foundry typefaces, allow for editable embedding. However, many fonts in the ATL are sublicensed to us by other companies and we have recently had to stop offering modification rights for some fonts.

If you purchased fonts from Adobe prior to 08 August , then you still have the modification rights granted by the EULA that came with your font. However, there is a new EULA for fonts purchased after that date.

Please refer to the table below to determine the modification rights permitted for any ATL font. Some fonts distributed by Adobe are open-source fonts with license terms that provide you unrestricted usage rights and greater creative freedom. You may find few Restricted Fonts included with Adobe software products. Restricted Fonts can be used for the exclusive use of the software itself — such as for menu display, interfaces, or document processing.

Such fonts are not licensed for use in your own documents. Many of these fonts are also available with a perpetual desktop license purchase or via Typekit font sync. Be sure to read the EULA carefully to understand what use is allowed. The following is a list of fonts governed by those limiting EULA terms. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Adobe Type and type technology resources Search.

Adobe Fonts User Guide. Select an article: Select an article:. Applies to: Adobe Fonts. Important Reminder: Adobe will disable support for authoring with Type 1 fonts in January See the Postscript Type 1 End of Support help article for more details. Why Adobe Type? Adobe type offers the following benefits:. Highest quality: Careful attention to detail of font outlines allows the finer points of each character to be imaged as sharply and accurately as possible. This betters the resolution of your monitor, printer, image setter, or film recorder.

Great selection: The Adobe Type Library offers more than 2, typefaces, one of the largest selections of high-quality typefaces. Award-winning contemporary type designers have created the Adobe Originals designs, while many others are licensed from the oldest and most respected type foundries in the world.

Typographic refinements: Many Adobe typefaces offer companion expert sets, old style figures, small caps, ligatures, and other variations required for professional typography. Also, Adobe invented the expert set , a standard character set, and encoding for many supplementary characters. With OpenType, Adobe is packing in more characters into the base font.

Technological leadership: Adobe Systems are the leader in the field of digital typographic production and design for good reason. The engineers and designers at Adobe Systems constantly strive to improve the technology that gave birth to high-quality digital type with the Type 1 format. What is PostScript? What is Type 1? What is TrueType? What is OpenType? What are Character sets? Adobe Western 2 also adds 17 more symbol characters: euro, liter, estimated, omega, pi, partialdiff, delta, product, summation, radical, infinity, integral, approxequal, notequal, lessequal, greater equal, and lozenge.

Adobe Western 2 is the new minimum character set standard implemented in OpenType fonts from Adobe. This is the standard character set in most PostScript Type 1 fonts from Adobe. Greek The Greek alphabet is one of the oldest known writing systems, having been adapted from the Phoenician alphabet about 3, years ago.

Fonts with a Greek character set include the characters and punctuation required to support the modern Greek language. Polytonic Greek Fonts that support Polytonic Greek include additional archaic Greek characters that are useful when setting historical or Biblical texts in Greek language.

Cyrillic The Cyrillic alphabet was reformed by Peter the Great in Russia in the early eighteenth century. Customized These fonts may contain a subset of the entire standard Adobe Western 2 character range and may support a limited number of languages.

For example, certain supplemental expert set fonts may only contain specific glyphs such as small capitals, swashes or alternate letter forms, while certain display fonts may omit a few accented characters.

Adobe Japan The Adobe-Japan character collection contains 15, glyphs and is a super set of the Adobe-Japan character collection. Adobe-Japan contains thousands of kanji and kana variants to provide rich typographic support. A detailed description of the Adobe-Japan character collection is included in Adobe Tech Note Adobe Japan The Adobe-Japan character collection contains 9, glyphs, including some glyph variants.

Kana Kana fonts contain a subset of the Adobe-Japan character collection and include a set of hiragana and katakana glyphs. Pr6N Japanese These fonts are based on the Adobe-Japan character collection 23, glyphs , which includes many glyph variants. Vietnamese Fonts with Vietnamese character set include another characters required to write the common form of Vietnamese language. Adobe-Korea Fonts based on the Adobe-Korea character collection support Korean and contain 18, glyphs.

All 11, hangul, 4, hanja Chinese characters and a complete set of symbols and punctuation are included. The KS X standard is supported in its entirety. PlusN PlusN fonts are based on Adobe-Japan character collection 9, glyphs , but also include extra glyphs from Adobe-Japan regions. Gujarati Fonts with Gujarati character set include the characters required to write the common form of the Gujarati script. Tamil Fonts with Tamil character set include the characters required to write the common form of the Tamil script.

What are the common terms used in Adobe Type fonts? Alignment can be flush left, flush right, justified, or centered.

Flush left and flush right are sometimes referred to as left justified and right justified. The body text should be set in an appropriate and easy-to-read face, typically at or point size. Headlines that need emphasis should be boldface.

Italics are preferable for emphasis in body text. This may or may not be the same as the height of ascenders. Cap height is used in some systems to measure the type size. Headlines are often centered. It is generally not good to mix centered text with flush left or flush right text. Also see character encoding, glyph, keyboard layout. This gives a feeling of variety without losing harmony. Within a particular font, contrast also refers to the variety of stroke thicknesses that make up the characters.

Helvetica has low contrast and Bodoni has high contrast. In some typefaces, the uppercase J and Q also descend below the baseline. Typically such a font is not as readable at smaller sizes for large amounts of text. If a serif font with optical sizes, it will likely have lighter weight main stems and much lighter weight serifs and crossbars than a text-size version of the same typeface.

Refers to the resolution at which a device, such as a monitor or printer, can display text and graphics. Monitors are usually dpi or less, and laser printers are dpi or higher. An image printed on a laser printer looks sharper than the same image on a monitor. This method is used to indicate the start of a new section of text, such as a chapter. It indicates that a word or phrase has been omitted.

Em is traditionally defined as the width of the uppercase M in the current face and point size. It is more properly defined as simply the current point size. For example, in point type, em is a distance of 12 points. En is traditionally defined as the width of the uppercase N in the current face and the current point size.

It is more properly defined as half the width of an em. For example, the italic style of the Garamond family is a face. A collection of faces that were designed and intended to be used together. For example, the Garamond family consists of roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semi-bold, and bold weights. Each of the style and weight combinations is called a face. If the same text is not aligned on the right margin, it is said to be set flush left, ragged right. The term ragged right is sometimes used alone to mean the same thing.

If the same text is not aligned on the left margin, it is said to be set flush right, ragged left. The term ragged left is sometimes used alone to mean the same thing. Before scalable type, there was little distinction between the terms font, face, and family. Font and face still tend to be used interchangeably, although the term face is usually more correct. The collection of faces that were designed together and intended to be used together. For example, the Garamond font family consists of roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semi-bold, and bold weights.

In the context of modern computer operating systems, it is often defined as a shape in a font that is used to represent a character code on screen or paper. The most common example of a glyph is a letter, but the symbols and shapes in a font like ITC Zapf Dingbats are also glyphs.

Also see character, character encoding, keyboard layout. This is sometimes referred to as outdenting. This is an effective style for displaying lists of information. Also the category of faces that are designed to work best in headline text. The upright faces are often referred to as roman. Justified text has a more formal appearance, but may be harder to read. Also see character, character encoding, glyph.

The term originally referred to the thin lead spacers that printers used to physically increase space between lines of metal type. Most applications automatically apply standard leading based on the point size of the font.

Closer leading fits more text on the page, but decreases legibility. Looser leading spreads text out to fill a page and makes the document easier to read. Leading can also be negative, in which case the lines of text are so close that they overlap or touch.

Kerning allows adjustments between individual letters; letterspacing is applied to a block of text as a whole. Letterspacing is sometimes referred to as tracking or track kerning. In some typefaces, character combinations such as fi and fl overlap, resulting in an unsightly shape. This method of kerning uses an algorithm to calculate the most optimal spacing between the letters. Manual kerning is simply adjusting the spacing between each letter yourself, which may seem very tedious to do.

It is the preferred method for designers who work a lot with typography, especially in graphic design. Contextual kerning essentially looks at a string of letters to determine the proper spacing between all of them. This kerning method automatically moves letters based on the most optimal spacing for an entire word, instead of only looking at two letters as a set.

The best fonts for kerning are those that already have good spacing between the letters, as this will save you a lot of editing time. Also, try to pick a minimalistic and legible font that will make it easy for anyone to read, especially if you are still just learning how to do kerning for the first time.

For example, large text on the home page of your website with inconsistent spacing between letters can really distract from the experience, and it may also disrupt the scannability of your site. If you are still unsure how to get started with kerning, visit different websites and save images of typography examples to your design inspiration mood board.

If you come across a unique typography challenge, you can likely solve it by looking at your collection of favorite samples. Dan Silveira is a UX designer and writer. He lives in Toronto, Canada where he works for a major tech company. He enjoys cracking open a new novel, writing fiction and non-fiction, and experimenting with a variety of design mediums.

UX writing has become a discipline in its own right, complete with books, bootcamps, and conferences. Skip to content Logo-full.

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