CoolType is a software technology, introduced by
Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...
in 2000, to increase the legibility of text on color liquid-crystal displays (
LCD
A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...
s) like laptop or thin-film transistor (
TFT) LCD monitors, especially to make reading long text, like
E-Book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...
s, easier. Although it is primarily for LCDs, the legibility on cathode ray tube (
CRT
CRT or Crt most commonly refers to:
* Cathode-ray tube, a display
* Critical race theory, an academic framework of analysis
CRT may also refer to:
Law
* Charitable remainder trust, United States
* Civil Resolution Tribunal, Canada
* Columbia ...
) monitors is also improved.
The main reason why Adobe built their own sub-pixel renderer is so they could display documents the same way across various operating systems: Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.
When it was launched, CoolType supported a wider range of fonts than Microsoft's
ClearType
ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...
, which was then limited to
TrueType
TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...
fonts, whereas Adobe's CoolType also supported
PostScript fonts
PostScript fonts are font files encoded in outline font specifications developed by Adobe Systems for professional digital typesetting. This system uses PostScript file format to encode font information.
"PostScript fonts" may also separately ...
(and their
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...
equivalent as well).
CoolType is also available in non-Adobe applications through the commercially licensed Adobe PDF Library.
As with
ClearType
ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...
,
Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...
and
FreeType, CoolType uses
subpixel rendering to effectively triple the usual horizontal resolution of the screen. This makes the text sharper, but the colors might be slightly incorrect at the edges. However, the human eye is better at detecting variations in intensity than in color, and these discrepancies are not usually noticeable.
CoolType also obsoleted the
Adobe Type Manager (ATM). Because the font selection menus that CoolType provides display fewer details than ATM, there were some initial problems in editing
TeX
Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
PostScript output in Adobe applications that used CoolType.
Footnotes
See also
*
Subpixel rendering
*
Font rasterization
Font rasterization is the process of converting text from a vector description (as found in scalable fonts such as TrueType fonts) to a raster or bitmap description. This often involves some anti-aliasing on screen text to make it smoother a ...
External links
More information about Adobe CoolType
2000 software
Adobe software
Digital typography
{{digital-typography-stub