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 High-quality
text on consumer electronics devices presents inherent challenges.
Low-resolution screens and requirements for text at small sizes hinder
legibility and display quality. Memory constraints limit the file sizes of
fonts that can be embedded in devices. These challenges are heightened when
displaying text in languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which are
based on writing systems containing thousands of characters. To support such
robust character sets, font file sizes have typically been large, placing an
extreme burden on available memory. Additionally, East Asian languages contain
characters that are intricately shaped, which are difficult to display at small
sizes.
To deal with these constraints, OEMs traditionally have had to enter tradeoffs
between style, file size and quality. For example, a manufacturer may have
chosen a simple typeface design to save memory, or accepted a larger font file
size in order to assure legibility at small sizes. Today, Edge™ Technology
gives manufacturers maximum flexibility to overcome these constraints while
minimizing tradeoffs. As an optional plug-in for the iType® font engine, Edge
Technology provides high-quality text rendering for fonts supporting all
languages, with additional features catered to the unique demands of rendering
East Asian scripts on consumer electronics devices.
Edge-enhanced stroke fonts provide a new level of memory efficiency and display
quality at small text sizes. The solution begins with a Monotype Imaging stroke
font. Its simple, stroke-based structure allows the thousands of characters
needed to support an East Asian language to be stored in a font file that is
much smaller in size than a TrueType®-based alternative. Edge Technology is
then applied, leveraging an intelligent scaling algorithm which reduces the
amount of instructions required for the font to display clearly and legibly,
thereby resulting in Monotype Imaging’s most compact, memory-efficient stroke
solution. Intricately shaped characters maintain fidelity even at small text
sizes, thanks to a built-in stroke removal capability, which aids legibility by
automatically removing strokes, without changing the meaning of affected
characters that otherwise are subject to conglutination or displaying
illegibly.
Like their stroke-based counterparts, TrueType-based Edge fonts deliver quality
at small sizes. However, they also deliver enhanced style, as TrueType fonts
offer near limitless design options. Starting with a TrueType file, our Compact
Asian Technology for TrueType (CATT™) solution is applied to reduce file size
significantly. As with the Edge stroke fonts, a combination of run-time
intelligence and display instructions are built into the font to assure
legibility at small text sizes with a significantly reduced file size penalty
than that of traditional TrueType hints. The result is a solution that provides
superior detail and style while retaining crisp readability at small sizes.
The Edge Technology software development kit ships with the following TrueType
Edge fonts:
Edge Technology enables Monotype Imaging to extend the selection of optimized
non-East Asian fonts more rapidly than previously possible. With the technology
performing optimization work during run time, the time to produce and deliver
fonts optimized for the consumer electronic environment has now been shortened
significantly.
Edge Technology also provides a mechanism for tuning the appearance of the
grayscale output. The rendered image can be tuned to appear lighter, darker,
sharper or softer. This capability can be used to adjust the output across
products which may use different displays. It can also be used to make small
sized text look sharp, while larger size text retains a softer look.
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