For example, vendors may wish to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese fonts. Although Chinese and Japanese ideographs are in the same Unicode sub-range, Japanese glyphs and Chinese glyphs for the same character may differ slightly in shape. The Middle East and Far East editions of Windows 95 ship fonts containing TrueType Open information, and the system makes use of TrueType Open features such as glyph substitution for Arabic and vertical glyph substitution for Japanese. Future versions of Windows NT will also make use of TrueType Open. TrueType Open is labeled open because its format is straightforward and easy to parse.
Vendors can add features as long as they adhere to the format.
A TrueType Open API that will provide standard services is also in the works and is scheduled for release in the first half of 1996. All rights reserved.