Typecast

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Typecast is a font development environment for OpenType font technology. Facilities (will) include:

• An outline editor for both TrueType and PostScript outlines
• TrueType hinting engine
• PostScript hinting engine
• Hinting debuggers
• Font conversion utilities
• Font handling libraries for use in wider application development

Parts of the Typecast libraries are used in the Apache Batik project, for conversion from TrueType to SVG fonts. Further contributions will be made to Batik - particularly in the areas of PostScript outlines and font hinting.

OpenType fonts come in a small range of file format flavours. Typecast supports the following:

• ttf - The basic TrueType font file
• otf - Essentially the same as ttf, but usually contain a PostScript outline rather than a TrueType outline
• ttc - TrueType Collection file. This is a collection of fonts that share some common tables. Often utilised by far eastern fonts to make more efficient use of shared components
• dfont - A Macintosh Font Suitcase resource file, with the resources in the data fork - as utilised by Mac OS X

Typecast is also able to export fonts to non-OpenType formats. Currently, the following are supported:

• svg - Scalable Vector Graphics font data

No import file formats are supported as yet, but traditional PostScript Type 1 and Compact Font Format (CFF) font import are under development.

Current outline support is for TrueType outlines. But of course, PostScript outlines are on the development roadmap.

Partial support is in place for the Advanced Typographic Tables, specifically the GPOS and GSUB tables. All advanced tables will be implemented in the ongoing development.

Help Wanted

All people with an interest in font technology are invited to join the Typecast project. We need people to do coding work, but more importantly we need people who work with fonts and have ideas about what their ideal tool should do. Typecast's initial design is driven by a desire to give people access to every level of a font's creation. But we need to know how to develop that design into one of a professional-level typography tool, and we invite all typography professionals (and enthusiastic amateurs) to help us achieve that.

So please sign on in whatever capacity you feel suitable (we can never have enough testers!). Then download the latest test build and start taking a closer look at the OpenType fonts on your system!

Systems Requirements

Typecast is built with Java JDK 5.0 and later. Primary source code development is performed using NetBeans 5.5.

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$Revision: 1.12 $ $Date: 2007/02/20 10:19:58 $