Proprietary Technology
QuickDraw GX was a complete overhaul of the Macintosh graphics system, including the font system, which was rolled out for System 7.5 in 1995. QuickDraw GX fonts could be in either TrueType or PostScript Type 1 formats, and included additional information about the glyphs and their purpose. Advanced features, such as ligatures, glyph variations, kerning information and small caps, could be used by any GX enabled application. Previously, they had typically been reserved for advanced typesetting applications.
Microsoft was refused a license to GX technology and chose to develop OpenType instead. GX typography and GX technology as a whole never saw widespread adoption. Support for GX was dropped in later versions of the system.
Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) is a set of extensions to TrueType which cover much of the same ground as OpenType, developed independently but concurrently with the Adobe/Microsoft format (circa 1995), and is the successor to the little-used QuickDraw GX font technology. It also incorporates concepts from the Multiple Master font format, which allows multiple axes of traits to be defined and an n-dimensional number of glyphs to be accessible within that space. AAT features do not alter the underlying characters, but do affect their representation during glyph conversion.
AAT is also supported in IBM’s open source ICU library, which is being used to implement support for AAT fonts under Linux and other open source operating systems.
Read more about this topic: Fonts On Macintosh, Font Technology
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