The FreeType rendering engine was started in 1995 by David Turner with the intent to provide TrueType font support for the OS/2 operating system,[1] including an interpreter for handling TrueType bytecode. Originally written in the Pascal programming language, it was ported in 1997 by Robert Wilhelm to C.[3][6][7]
FreeType 1 had support only for the TrueType font format, but it included an extension to support OpenType text layout features.
Version 2.0 of FreeType was a complete rewrite to make it more modular. FreeType 2 brought support for more font formats and an evolved source code which the developers stated was "simpler and more powerful".[8] FreeType 2 is not backward-compatible with FreeType 1 but the developers stated that moving from FreeType 1 to FreeType 2 poses little difficulty.[8]Astext layout processing was not an objective of FreeType 2, however, the OpenType text layout functionality of FreeType 1 was removed in FreeType 2. A very evolved form of the OpenType text layout functionality of FreeType 1 is used in the Pango text layout library. The HarfBuzz project is further evolving that functionality with a complete rewrite offered as a standalone library with a less restrictive license than Pango's license.[9]
In 1999, the Freetype project was informed by Apple Incorporated that FreeType was infringing patents related to TrueType font hinting. Following that, Freetype deactivated by default or worked around patent relating technologies. Therefore, several open source projects, such as FreeBSDorLinux, had FreeType included with font hinting functionality disabled or degraded to avoid the issue of software patents held by Apple Inc.[10]
Since May 2010, all conflicting software patents related to font hinting have expired,[10] allowing FreeType's TrueType font hinter to be used in open source. Many of the operating systems which disabled the renderer now give the user the option to enable it. In Fedora, freetype-freeworld was switched from the proprietary yum repository to the free repository.[11]
Since August 2019, all conflicting software patents related to ClearType color filtering have expired,[10] allowing FreeType to use ClearType color filtering method in 2.10.3.
In 2013 Adobe donated a Compact Font Format rendering engine to the FreeType project which integrated it and made it the default with version 2.5.[12][13]
FreeType is used as a font renderer in Android, ChromeOS.[14]Apple uses FreeType in iOS[14] and macOS[15] next to Apple Advanced Typography. In 2007, Sun Microsystems switched from using a proprietary font rasterizer to using FreeType in the OpenJDKJava development kit.[16]OnWindows, projects like gdipp[17] and MacType[18] aim to override the system renderer with FreeType. FreeType is also used as a font renderer in ReactOS.[19]
^Royal, Simon (2014-02-26). "ReactOS: A Windows Compatible Alternative OS". lowendmac.com. Retrieved 2016-01-10. While the main core of ReactOS is built from scratch, it has some dependencies on existing software and protocols. It uses parts of Wine, networking in the form of lwIP, USB from Haiku, as well as FreeType, Mesa3D, and UniATA.
^Opera 9 for the Wii console uses FreeType, as can be seen by looking at the "Third-party information" page which can be found on the Wii via: Internet Channel > Operations Guide > About > Opera 9 for Wii — Third-party information
