What’s New in D-Type 7.5

All Platforms

• D-Type Font Engine now supports WOFF 2.0 (.woff2) fonts aka Web fonts. WOFF 2.0 is not a new font format per se but simply a wrapper for existing TrueType and OpenType fonts. WOFF 2.0 does however efficiently package existing fonts due to the Brotli compression algorithm. The resulting fonts typically feature a 30% reduction in file size compared to the original TrueType/OpenType fonts. Existing D-Type clients/programs that already handle TrueType, OpenType or WOFF 1.0 fonts don’t need to do anything special to support WOFF 2.0 fonts. These fonts can be opened like any other TrueType/OpenType fonts. Clients only need to ensure that WOFF 1.0 and 2.0 fonts are accepted by D-Type Font Engine, which is accomplished by associating the ACCEPT_WOFF_PACKAGING configuration keyword with the corresponding Font Factory Instance in the dtype.inf initialization file. The default dtype.inf file that ships with D-Type engines already enables support for WOFF 1.0 and WOFF 2.0 fonts.

• D-Type Text Layout Extension now includes the latest HarfBuzz 2.6.6 shaping engine. This by itself is a major upgrade since HarfBuzz 2 supports OpenType fonts with Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) shaping tables. This means that fonts such as Zapfino and similar AAT fonts can be shaped as intended. This eliminates the only remaining reason for using D-Type Text Layout Extension that is based on the legacy and now obsolete ICU LayoutEngine. Starting with D-Type 7.5.1.1, D-Type Text Layout Extension will be built using exclusively the HarfBuzz shaping engine.

• For the very first time, D-Type engines ship with D-Type VIVO Image Vectorizer. See this page for details. Currently the VIVO vectorizer is available as a command line program (powerdoc_pix2vec), which is located in the same folder as D-Type PowerDoc Editor. A GUI based version is planned in the future. Note that this program should be regarded as "a technology preview version" and may not be suitable for production use.

• We are no longer building D-Type evaluation libraries separately from the fully licensed libraries. Starting with D-Type 7.5.1.1 the same set of libraries is provided for both evaluation and production purposes. As a result, the users of fully licensed D-Type libraries will need to disable the evaluation mode by specifying their license credentials during the initialization of D-Type Engine. The license credentials as well as the instructions on how to disable the evaluation mode are available to all licensed users on their D-Type download page. We believe that this change will greatly simplify and streamline the building process on all supported platforms while ensuring that the fully licensed and evaluation libraries can be released simultaneously.

Windows Specific

• On Windows D-Type libraries are now built using MS Visual Studio 2017. There are two important consequences of this: (1) D-Type dynamic libraries (.dll) will no longer work on outdated and unsupported Windows platforms, such as Windows 95 or 2000; (2) The users of static (.lib) D-Type libraries will need MS Visual Studio 2017 or better to link their code with D-Type. This change was necessary due to the fact that the level of C++11 support in earlier versions of MS Visual Studio is inadequate. Staying with older versions of MS Visual Studio would make it impossible to keep developing and improving D-Type on the Windows platform. Note that the users of dynamic (.dll) D-Type libraries can still use older versions of MS Visual Studio if they wish.

• All D-Type libraries are still available in both 32 and 64-bit architecture. All pre-built demo programs, D-Type Font Viewer and Optimizer, D-Type PowerDoc Editor and D-Type VIVO Image Vectorizer are built as 32-bit binaries.

• We are retiring the Setup Program for D-Type Engines on Windows. Now D-Type engines for Windows ship in a ZIP package just like D-Type for Linux or Mac. In fact, the same ZIP package is used on all three platforms. This, again, should greatly simplify and streamline the building process of D-Type engines on all supported platforms.

Linux Specific

• On Linux D-Type libraries are now built using GCC 8.3. Note that GCC 8 uses the libstdc++.so.6 C++ Standard Library. All D-Type libraries are compiled as Position Independent Code (i.e. the -fPIC switch is enabled).

• All D-Type libraries are still available in both 32 and 64-bit architecture. However, all pre-built demo programs, D-Type Font Viewer and Optimizer, D-Type PowerDoc Editor and D-Type VIVO Image Vectorizer are built as 64-bit binaries.

Mac Specific

• On macOS D-Type libraries are now built using clang 11 and linked with libc++. The libraries target Mac OS X version 10.8 and higher (i.e. the MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET environment variable has been raised from 10.4 to 10.8). This means that D-Type libraries will no longer work on outdated and unsupported Mac platforms, such as Mac OS X 10.4.

• All D-Type libraries are still available in both 32 and 64-bit architecture. However, all pre-built demo programs, D-Type Font Viewer and Optimizer, D-Type PowerDoc Editor and D-Type VIVO Image Vectorizer are built as 64-bit binaries.