18.3 TrueType Font Technology

With TrueType fonts, applications have much greater control over the final appearance of documents than was possible with previous Windows font technologies. Much of this added control is the result of the portability of TrueType fonts: An application can move them from the system to a printer, from a printer to the system, from one system to another system (by “embedding” them in documents), and even port them between incompatible operating systems.

Sophisticated desktop-publishing and word-processing applications go to great lengths to make the screen output mimic the printer output. Some applications even change the way the fonts appear on the screen, in an attempt to show users what the printer output will look like. This kind of application benefits greatly from exploiting the advantages of TrueType.