The FreeType Project | The FreeType Project (original) (raw)

FreeType is a freely available software library to render fonts.

It is written in C, designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable while capable of producing high-quality output (glyph images) of most vector and bitmap font formats.

Some products that use FreeType for rendering fonts on screen or on paper, either exclusively or partially:

• GNU/Linux and other free Unix operating system derivates likeFreeBSD orNetBSD;
• iOS, Apple's mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads;
• Android, Google's operating system for smartphones and tablet computers;
• ChromeOS, Google's operating system for laptop computers;
• ReactOS, a free open source operating system based on the best design principles found in the Windows NT architecture;
• Ghostscript, a PostScript interpreter used in many printers.

Counting the above products only, you get more than a billion devices that contain FreeType.

News & Updates

FreeType 2.9.1

2018-05-02

This is a maintenance release; most importantly fixing correct handling of Type 1 fonts with flex features, which was broken in version 2.9. An overview of the remaining changes is givenhere. All users should upgrade.

FreeType 2.9

2018-01-08

FreeType version 2.9, the first release of a new ‘minor’ series, is now available for download. The main reason for starting a new series is Ewald Hew's GSoC contribution of making Adobe's CFF engine handle Type 1 fonts also, greatly improving the rendering quality of this ancient but still important font format.

If you are going to use variation fonts, please update to this version since it comes with some important fixes. More information on this and other changes can be foundhere.

FreeType 2.8.1

2017-09-16

FreeType 2.8.1 has been released. This is mainly a maintenance release with one important change: By default, FreeType now offers high quality LCD-optimized output without resorting to ClearType techniques of resolution tripling and filtering. In this method, called Harmony, each color channel is generated separately after shifting the glyph outline, capitalizing on the fact that the color grids on LCD panels are shifted by a third of a pixel. This output is indistinguishable from ClearType with a light 3-tap filter.

Seeherefor a extensive list of changes; noteworthy bug fixes are correct handling of B/W TrueType hinting and some OpenType variation font handling issues.

FreeType 2.8

2017-05-13

FreeType 2.8 has been released. CFF2 support and OpenType variation font handling is now complete; the auto-hinter now understands 25 more scripts, for example N'Ko and Tifinagh.

Seeherefor a list of changes; noteworthy bug fixes are the handling of TrueType fonts: unhinted loading didn't work as expected, and the light auto-hinter used incorrect metrics.

GSoC

2017-02-28

The FreeType project was accepted to be part of Google Summer of Code 2017! Here's a link to our ideas list – if you have another one, please write to our mailing list so that we can discuss your suggestions, eventually adding them to the list. And if you want to participate as a student, now is the time to discuss everything, again using the mailing list.

FreeType 2.7.1

2016-12-30

FreeType 2.7.1 has been released. The most important news is preliminary support of Adobe's new CFF2 font format and variation fonts as specified in the new OpenType specification version 1.8. It also fixes the handling of raw CID fonts (which might be found in PDF files)

Seeherefor a list of changes.

FreeType 2.7

2016-09-08

We start a new ‘minor’ series, which finally allows us to activate a new default mode for bytecode hinting (see also the announcements below for version 2.6.4 and 2.6.5): Subpixel hinting, also known as ClearType hinting.

In case you are already using subpixel hinting (for example, by using the ‘Infinality patches’ as provided by some GNU/Linux or BSD distributions, or directly from bohoomil.com), be noted that the new mode might provide subtle differences; the code was simplified to make it much faster. If you are used to the old full-pixel hinting, you will see many rendering changes. If you really dislike them, you can disable them at compile time or using the newFREETYPE_PROPERTIES environment variable.

A description of the remaining changes can be foundhere, as usual.

FreeType 2.6.5

2016-07-12

This release is almost identical to the previous version, with two differences.

• It compiles again on Mac OS X, and
• it reverts the activation of subpixel hinting by default; it will be enabled by default in the forthcoming 2.7.x series. Main reason for reverting this feature is the principle of least surprise: a sudden change in appearance of all fonts (even if the rendering improves for almost all recent fonts) should not be expected in a new micro version of a series.

FreeType 2.6.4

2016-07-05

FreeType 2.6.4 has been released. The most important change is a new bytecode hinting mode for TrueType fonts that finally activates subpixel hinting (a.k.a. ClearType hinting) by default.

The new release also brings support for the following new scripts in the auto-hinter: Armenian, Cherokee, Ethiopic, Georgian, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Malayalam, Sinhala, and Tamil.

Seeherefor a detailed list of changes.

FreeType 2.6.3

2016-02-09

FreeType 2.6.3 has been released. It brings support for four new Asian scripts in the auto-hinter (Khmer, Myanmar, Kannada, and Bengali), together with other, minor improvements and bug fixes.

Seeherefor a detailed list of changes.

More on the 2.6.2 release for users and developers

2015-11-30

FreeType 2.6.2 ships with three interesting details for users and developers of rendering libraries that deal with text. Read more.

FreeType 2.6.2

2015-11-28

FreeType 2.6.2 has been released. This is a minor release that mainly provides better handling of malformed fonts. All users should upgrade.

A new feature is stem darkening support for the auto-hinter. Note, however, that it is off by default, since most graphic systems don't provide correct linear alpha blending with gamma correction, which is crucial for a good appearance. For the same reason, stem darkening for the CFF engine is now off by default, too.

Seeherefor a more detailed list of changes.

FreeType 2.6.1

2015-10-04

FreeType 2.6.1 has been released. This is a minor release that corrects problems with CFF metrics, and that provides better handling of malformed fonts. Two notably new features are auto-hinting support for the Lao script and a simple interface for accessing named instances in GX TrueType variation fonts.

Seeherefor a list of changes.

FreeType 2.6

2015-06-08

FreeType 2.6 has been released. This is a new major release that provides a better (and simpler) thread-safety model. Among other new features we now have auto-hinting support for Arabic and Thai, together with much improved handling of Apple's GX TrueType variation font format.

Seeherefor a list of changes.

FreeType 2.5.5

2014-12-30

FreeType 2.5.5 has been released. This is a minor bug fix release: All users of PCF fonts should update, since version 2.5.4 introduced a bug that prevented reading of such font files if not compressed.

FreeType 2.5.4

2014-12-06

FreeType 2.5.4 has been released. All users should upgrade due to another fix for vulnerability CVE-2014-2240 in the CFF driver. The library also contains a new round of patches for better protection against malformed fonts.

The main new feature, which is also one of the targets mentioned in the pledgie roadmap below, is auto-hinting support for Devanagari and Telugu, two widely used Indic scripts. A more detailed description of the remaining changes and fixes can be foundhere.

New Pledgie Campaign

2014-03-11

This is a call for a new Pledgie campaignto support my (Werner Lemberg) expenses in 2014. Thanks to all donors, the last campaignwas successful, and all goals have been reached!

If your company is using FreeType in your product, and you care about continuing support and further development, please contribute to my funding effort so I can continue to bring the best text rendering to your devices!

Alternatively, direct donations to my PayPal account are also highly welcome :-)

Roadmap

Besides user support and fixing bugs, your money will help me implement the following issues.

• Setting up a test framework for FreeType. This is a huge, long-term undertaking that will ensure both stability and reliability of the library. The idea is to collect test cases (mainly broken fonts) that cover as much source code as possible. Another idea to investigate is the development of scripts that can generate both valid and invalid input data to systematically increase the coverage of executed library code, including the unlikely cases. Finally, images of valid, well-rendered input fonts could be collected: As soon as a change to the rendering image gets applied, a comparison run with those images should detect rendering regressions.
• Further improvements to the auto-hinter. Right now, the module for Indic support is a dummy, and support for the family of Arabic scripts is completely missing. [[FreeType 2.9 comes with auto-hinting support for almost all scripts where hinting makes sense.]] Both investigation and research is necessary to find out how much auto-hinting is possible and useful, and whether other, completely different scripts can be supported at all.
• Right now, rendering Type 1 and CID-keyed fonts is the weakest part of FreeType. However, we now have a brand-new module for handling CFF. Given that CFF is very similar to Type 1, it should be not too difficult to use and/or extend the CFF code so that Type 1 fonts can be handled, too. [[This was a GSoC project in 2017, and the resulting code has been merged into FreeType 2.9.]]
• Explore whether it makes sense to merge FreeType with (parts of) theHarfBuzz library. Since version 2.5.3, FreeType already links to HarfBuzz to use its abilities for scanning OpenType layout features, and more integration might be sensible for both libraries.
• More improvements to this website. Last year I’ve redesigned the FreeType website. However, a large bunch of documents are still using the old design, and some of them are also no longer up to date. [[As with version 2.6.0, the FreeType Tutorial has been updated.]]

FreeType 2.5.3

2014-03-08

FreeType 2.5.3 has been released. All users should upgrade due to fixed vulnerability in the CFF driver (CVE-2014-2240).

Its main new feature is much enhanced support of auto-hinting SFNT fonts (i.e., TrueType and CFF fonts) due to the use of theHarfBuzz library. A more detailed description of this and other changes can be foundhere.

FreeType 2.5.2

2013-12-08

FreeType 2.5.2 has been released. It fixes a serious bug introduced in version 2.5.1; all users should upgrade.

A listing of the changes can be foundhere.

FreeType 2.5.1

2013-11-25

FreeType 2.5.1 has been released, providing three major new features.

• Support for the WOFF font format, contributed by Behdad Esfahbod.
• The auto-hinter now supports Hebrew, together with improved support for Cyrillic and Greek.
• The directory layout of the (installed) FreeType header files has been simplified.

Among other changes I want to mention that FreeType's TrueType debugger (ttdebug) has been made more versatile. An exhaustive list of changes can be foundhere.

Pledgie Campaign Was Successful!

2013-06-25

Thanks to a very generous donation by Pierre Arnaud fromEpsitec, the pledgie campaign for FreeType has reached its goal. I want to say thank you again to all donors! Of course, noone stops you from further donating to the campaign :-)

After integration of Adobe's CFF module and Google's color emoji support, I will use the next months to work on the remaining issues that I've promised to implement. Stay tuned!

FreeType 2.5

2013-06-19

FreeType 2.5 has been released. A major new feature is support for color embedded bitmaps (eg. color emoji), contributed by Behdad Esfahbod on behalf of Google. Additionally, Adobe's CFF engine is now the default, which makes a good reason to change from the 2.4.x to the 2.5.x series.

On the technical side, the property API to access FreeType module parameters (FT_Property_Set and FT_Property_Get) is now declared as stable.

As usual, see this filefor the complete release notes, which give more details. And we have again blog entries fromAdobeandGoogle.

[Please download the 2.5.0.1 bundle of the FreeType library, which fixes a packaging error.]

Links

The links collected in this section are useful if you want to put FreeType into a larger frame of understanding.

Reference Sites

Microsoft Typography – Microsoft's OpenType specification and developing tools\Apple Fonts – Apple's TrueType specification and other things\Adobe Typography – PostScript fonts specifications and developing tools

Detailed information on the font formats supported by FreeType can be found in the fileformats.txt, which is part of the FreeType source code bundle.

Font Tools

TTX – an OpenType assembler and disassembler\FontForge – a free, powerful graphical font editor, including a TrueType instructions debugger (using FreeType)\TrueTypeViewer– a free, powerful OpenType viewing tool with a TrueType instructions debugger (not using FreeType)\ttfautohint – a tool to auto-hint TrueType fonts, based on FreeType's auto-hinting engine

Font Shaping and Layout Engines

These libraries work on top of font rendering libraries like FreeType to provide sophisticated text (string) layout, being able to handle OpenType features in particular. All of them useUnicode for font and text encoding.

Pango – the layout library used byGnome's GTK+ framework\ICU – a layout library originally developed by IBM, used for example in XeTeX, an internationalized successor of TeX\HarfBuzz – a text shaping library, originally based on FreeType 1's OpenType layout support

T1Lib – a Type 1 fonts library (no longer under development)\VFLib – a library especially for accessing TeX fonts (no longer under development)

This page is maintained by Werner Lemberg. The FreeType logo has been designed by Manuel Colom.