Monday, February 11, 2008; Posted: 02:03 AM
"We're committed to providing easy access to the benefits of scalable fonts and font technologies in a vast array of development environments, and our iType Connects plug-ins underscore this pledge," said John Seguin, executive vice president of Monotype Imaging. "Today's announcement builds upon our partnerships with Symbian, QUALCOMM and Microsoft who have made iType available to OEMs and developers through the Symbian OS(TM), BREW(R) and Windows(R) Embedded CE environments, respectively. While we've offered embedded Linux solutions for years, customers can now bring products to market even faster using iType Connects for Linux, as the integration efforts required to leverage iType's capabilities have been virtually eliminated."
The iType Connects plug-in for Linux-based environments offers several capabilities not available within FreeType technology, such as:
-- Monotype Imaging's patent-pending SmartHint(TM) technology, which enables the clear display of East Asian text, including intricate letterforms displayed at small sizes;
-- the company's Fonts in a Box(TM) technology, which ensures that tall characters - those with accent marks and long descenders such as the lowercase y - display fully;
-- unique font linking capabilities, which provide flexibility in managing the font memory footprint of the device.
The new iType Connects plug-in for Linux also enables the use of Monotype Imaging's ESQ(R) Mobile(TM) (Enhanced Screen Quality) fonts, which have been optimized for superior display on mobile devices and are available in various personality- and theme-based styles. Stylistic, multilingual fonts engineered for high-quality display in memory-constrained environments may also be selected from Monotype Imaging's WorldType(R) font suite and Compact Asian Technology for TrueType(R) collection. "These innovations are the result of years of experience working with OEMs to develop solutions that best fit their needs. Through iType Connects, we're providing advanced capabilities to an expanding range of customers eager to improve time to market while ensuring exceptional text display quality and increased opportunity for personalization using fonts," Seguin said.
The iType scalable font engine contained in the iType Connects plug-in features enhanced modularity, enabling manufacturers to select capabilities according to device requirements such as screen resolution and memory capacity, as well as a device's intended use. "This level of flexibility helps ease the adoption of scalable fonts and is critical in bringing to market a wide range of low- to high-end consumer electronics devices that are all capable of displaying scalable text with superior clarity," said Steve Martin, vice president of engineering at Monotype Imaging. "We're continually enhancing our technologies not only to meet quality, style and legibility requirements but also to enhance production, time to market and global reach. Scalable fonts play a major role in each of these scenarios."
While bitmap fonts have played an effective role in the ability to render text on a device, they are fixed in size, meaning that additional storage and bitmap creation are required for every text size of every type style. "Reliance on bitmaps slows production timeframes, taxes memory resources and inhibits time to market. Bitmaps also make it especially difficult to support the native languages of high-growth regions such as China, where written languages can contain more than 28,000 characters. On their own, customers often find that switching from bitmap to scalable fonts is very difficult. Our solutions have been designed to make this transition as easy as possible," Martin said.
About the iType font engine
Monotype Imaging's iType scalable font engine, based on the OpenType(R) and TrueType(R) font formats, allows OEMs and developers to build products that clearly display characters regardless of screen resolution or display size. In addition to fonts optimized for mobile phones and other consumer electronics devices and innovations such as SmartHint and Fonts in a Box technology, the iType font engine supports custom typefaces, bitmaps, embedded bitmaps, font subsets and linked fonts.
About Monotype Imaging
Monotype Imaging is a global provider of text imaging solutions for manufacturers and developers of consumer electronics devices including laser printers, copiers, mobile phones, digital televisions, set-top boxes, digital cameras and software applications and operating systems. The company also provides printer drivers and color imaging technologies to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). Monotype Imaging technologies are combined with access to more than 9,000 typefaces from the Monotype(R), Linotype(R) and ITC(R) typeface libraries - home to some of the world's most widely used designs, including the Times New Roman(R), Helvetica(R) and ITC Franklin Gothic(TM) typefaces. Fonts are licensed to creative and business professionals through custom font design services, direct sales or e-commerce portals. Monotype Imaging offers fonts and industry-standard solutions that support all of the world's major languages. The company is based in Woburn, Mass., with regional offices in the U.K., Germany (Linotype), Mt. Prospect, Ill., Redwood City, Calif., Boulder, Colo., Japan and China. Information about Monotype Imaging and its products can be found at www.monotypeimaging.com, www.fonts.com, www.linotype.com, www.monotypefonts.com, www.itcfonts.com, www.customfonts.com, www.fontwise.com, www.fonts.hk and www.faces.co.uk.
Monotype, iType, WorldType and ESQ are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. iType Connects, SmartHint, Fonts in a Box and ESQ Mobile are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Times New Roman is a trademark of The Monotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. ITC is a trademark of International Typeface Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. ITC Franklin Gothic is a trademark of International Typeface Corp. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Linotype is a trademark of Linotype GmbH registered in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Helvetica is a trademark of Linotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions in the name of Linotype Corp. or its licensee Linotype GmbH. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. FreeType is a trademark of the FreeType Project. Symbian OS is a trademark of Symbian Software Ltd. BREW is a registered trademark of QUALCOMM Inc. TrueType is a trademark of Apple, Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. Windows and OpenType are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the U. S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (C) 2008 Monotype Imaging Inc. All rights reserved.
SOURCE: Monotype Imaging Inc.
Monotype Imaging Inc. Vikki Quick, 781-970-6115 vikki.quick@monotypeimaging.com or Monotype Imaging Ltd. Julie Strawson, +44 (0) 1737 781624 jl.strawson@monotypeimaging.com
More News:
Market Updates |
Stock Alerts |
All Trading News |
Stock Index
    |
   |
