Home > Tech Explained

MTE Explains: OpenType or TrueType, Which Should You Use?

By Paul Ferson

Generally speaking, file formats don’t impact a great deal on day-to-day computing. The majority of file types can be made to work independently of operating systems or software. Exceptions exist: software for one operating system will not work on another, and typefaces for Mac OS X tend to be in the .dfont file format.

Both issues can be brought to heel in different ways; we covered .dfont file formats before, and WINE is a renowned solution to running Windows software on UNIX systems.

Most people have preferred file formats for niches; some favour MP3, others FLAC, others AAC, and so on. Have you ever looked at your font library in the same way?

Font File Formats

While fonts are something people expect to “just work,” their formats do matter. We previously touched on the .dfont format used in OS X as an example, but Macs can use the two big font formats you’ll see cropping up over and over again: OpenType (.otf) and TrueType (.ttf).

TrueType

Fonfor-Explorer-TimesFamily

Windows’ default fonts are in the .ttf format, and its existence stretches back to the late 1980s. As a result, TrueType is now the most common file format in use, and it would be reasonable to assume it is the best for this reason. The development of the format can be traced back to a joint venture between Apple and Microsoft in an unusual case of corporate cooperation.

Fonfor-Explorer-TimesProperties

Fonfor-Explorer-TimesDetails

At one time, TrueType’s benefits were myriad. It allowed greater control over how a font displayed on-screen with hinting, and anti-aliasing made it possible to create an appealing looking font even without modern screen resolutions.

Fonfor-Explorer-CFonts

OpenType

Fonfor-Explorer-SandFolder

Developed in 1996, OpenType is newer than the TrueType format. Both fonts, therefore, enjoy similar levels of support across different operating systems. Generally speaking, you can identify an OpenType font via its .otf file format … but not always. As this rather advanced article outlines, it’s possible to have an OpenType font with a .ttf file format.

Fonfor-Explorer-OTFDetailsTab1

OpenType supports a larger number of features, such as “fi” ligatures automatically replacing the individual letters being entered together. Some of these features are really only of note with software like Adobe Illustrator; Monotype’s Font Shop suggests that you use TrueType over OpenType if you tend to rely on Microsoft Office software.

Fonfor-Explorer-OTFDetailsTab2

Conclusion

By now you should have a greater understanding of the two most common font formats and will likely have drawn your own conclusion with regards to which format you prefer.

We don’t recommend obsessing over the file formats too much; for everyday writing, the fonts shouldn’t give you too much hassle. If you work on projects and typesetting, then you are likely to require a greater knowledge of fonts and their characteristics.

Not sure if a font you’ve downloaded is suitable for your project? We have you covered – we took a look at a variety of software licenses including SIL Open, which is written specifically for fonts.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Paul Ferson Avatar
Paul Ferson
Paul is a Northern Irish tech enthusiast who can normally be found tinkering with Windows software or playing games.

Read next

In 1947, Harvard’s Mark II ran on roughly 13,000 electromechanical relays, stored numbers across 100 registers, and read instructions from punched paper tape, turning thousands of clicking metal switches into a Navy calculator vulnerable to dust, loose contacts, and one famously misplaced moth
In 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked email between two computers sitting side by side in the same room — he chose the @ symbol to separate user from machine because it was the only punctuation on the keyboard nobody was using
In 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked email between two computers sitting side by side in the same room — he chose the @ symbol to separate user from machine because it was the only punctuation on the keyboard nobody was using
How did a single computer worm written by a Cornell graduate student in November 1988 crash roughly 6,000 machines and force the internet to invent security?
How did a single computer worm written by a Cornell graduate student in November 1988 crash roughly 6,000 machines and force the internet to invent security?
When you tilt a smartphone, gravity shifts microscopic silicon fingers inside its accelerometer by only a few nanometres, changing the capacitance between them and producing the electrical imbalance the phone reads as a new direction for down
A microwave oven works because water molecules have a slight positive and negative end — the magnetron flips an electric field 2.45 billion times a second, and the molecules twist back and forth so fast the friction becomes heat
The retina of the mantis shrimp carries 16 types of colour receptor to the human eye's three — and yet experiments suggest it sees colour worse than we do, using the extra channels for speed instead of subtlety
The retina of the mantis shrimp carries twelve types of colour receptor to the human eye’s three — and yet experiments suggest it sees colour worse than we do, using the extra channels for speed instead of subtlety
A bolt of lightning heats the air around it to roughly 30,000 kelvin — about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun — which is why the channel explodes outward and we hear thunder
When a lightning return stroke heats a channel only centimetres wide to roughly 30,000 kelvin, about five times the temperature of the Sun’s visible surface, the air expands so violently that the pressure wave rolls across the ground as thunder
In October 1957, a beachball-sized aluminium sphere called Sputnik 1 began sending 0.3-second pulses on two radio frequencies from orbit, signals amateur operators around the world could receive, making the space age suddenly audible from Earth