Seven weeks ago today, Google along with
Adobe and the
FreeType project, released a new CFF rasterizer into FreeType for beta testing. Well, it’s been put through its paces and is ready for release. In the latest version of FreeType,
build 2.5, the new Adobe CFF rasterizer will now be on by default. This means that products using FreeType, such as Chrome OS, Android, and Linux, will have better looking CFF fonts. The new CFF rasterizer in FreeType has already been made available in the
dev channel build of Chrome OS.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnLNAOBtCTB8EmPGdZ650Kd6fcM000EDZA1VbNdEN6F5Pdop21-4Jqxdiww7rMVFGOmOYYlU2Z8MDOHeZimA2Hq7YAlrQTAjXSKSflAzmschWaoX5-sWl8q-0h2Kj8Dr2P-48Jromy66w/s1600/image00.png) |
FreeType Using the Old CFF Rasterizer with Light Auto Hint (most common setting) |
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWi9eTATkcIiNB68Kn2XEqvAnNPl-oSOpegxMuWUkQ_9T4YHf7ySuHCH-iI1_m3DTlRlPIAsl27OfLdp6565xN9ulCo7gIFs22iO50tBovpQ5Tk1pqeTEXkxgmMjzY7niIXLNmzQRQxuE/s1600/image01.png) |
FreeType Using the Adobe CFF Rasterizer (now the default CFF rasterizer) |
The open source community has helped us find and fix several issues during this beta period and we are now ready for a stable release. The Adobe CFF rasterizer will continue to spread to new products. This work paves the way for FreeType-based platforms to provide users with richer and more beautiful reading experiences. This is only the start!
By Stuart Gill, Font and Text Team, Internationalization Engineering