Ran across this chart today on FontShop's 20 year anniversary page:
I found it interesting that it wasn't until recently that OpenType font sales surpassed the sales of PostScript fonts. The OpenType format was announced in 1996 and major applications and operating systems have supported it for a number of years now. Makes me wonder who is still buying PostScript (or TrueType) fonts and why?
OpenType fonts have several big advantages over PostScript or TrueType fonts, including:
- A single file per font: makes distribution and installation easier more trouble-free
- Cross platform: the same font file works on Macintosh or Windows
- Support for large character sets: wonderful for multilingual projects
- Special extended features in some fonts and applications: support for alternate characters, fractions, oldstyle numerals and more
There's no reason that I can think of for most designers to be purchasing PostScript or TrueType versions of fonts any longer. So the next time you buy a font, think OpenType!
Also of interest: A pie chart on FontShop's 20 year anniversary page claims that 25% of the Fontshop.com support requests are about fonts on the Macintosh platform, and 75% are about the Windows platform. No surprise there!
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1 comment:
In Israel local type foundries (such as FontBit.co.il or MasterFont.co.il) making OT fonts are not support the most of the technology advantages. They utilize only automatic diacritics positioning and sell the OT fonts for twice price against Type 1 or TT. They do not support even for cross-platform OT to sell a font twice.
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