![]() ![]() Most printers at this time were based on either Hewlett Packard’s Printer Command Language (PCL) or on Adobe’s PostScript Language-both of which were known as Page Description Languages (PDL). One of the principal uses for these typefaces was to provide What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) which allows one to see on the screen a representation of how the document will look on a printed piece of paper. These fonts were provided to Microsoft by Bitstream, although engineers at Microsoft made significant modifications to the font data. The primary user interface font was called System (still shipping with Windows today) and there were two typefaces mostly used for documents, Tms Rmn and Helv (as of Windows 3.1, these were renamed MS Serif and MS Sans Serif, respectively). (There were a few exceptions of vector fonts used for plotters and some primitive outline fonts for OS/2, but both were not widely used). Prior to this announcement, both Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager relied on bitmap fonts for the display of text. I chose to recognize July 18th, 1990 because that is the date Monotype and Microsoft started working together on the project, and much happened in the four months between the start of the project and the official press release. The observant reader will note that the date of the press release is November 8th, 1990-still a few months out. The TrueType Fonts press release was part of a package of materials sent to the press for the event. Bill Gates gave an opening keynote on Monday, November 12th, where he described his vision of Information at Your Fingertips. The prior May, Windows 3.0 had been released and it was a big part of Microsoft’s presence at Comdex. This press release coincided with the Fall 1990 Comdex conference held in Las Vegas in November. ![]() Graphical environment and OS/2® operating systems. TrueType™-compatible format for use in future versions of the Microsoft® Windows™ 8, 1990 - Microsoft and Monotype corporations todayĪnnounced that Microsoft has licensed from Monotype a core set of fonts in ![]() Microsoft and Monotype Announce Contract for TrueType Fonts ![]() I have taken the liberty to move some of the paragraphs in the press release around to create a better narrative. I thought I would give some background on how we chose those fonts, what were some of the goals of the project, and what was the development process. Like my earlier article on the 30th Anniversary of Microsoft and Apple cross-licensing the TrueType font technology, I’ll use the official press release that Microsoft and Monotype issued to guide the story. Today, July 18, 2020, marks 30 years since Microsoft started working with Monotype on the original core fonts that first shipped with Microsoft Windows 3.1 Times New Roman, Arial, & Courier New. ![]()
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