[[Someone have URLs for what '''TrueType''' is, etc.?
Google suggests http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/ as one possible site - appears to have a history and other information about the technology.  Note that Microsoft no longer provides their set of TrueType web fonts for people to download.

[RS]: Name of a company (later bought by [Microsoft]) which produced scalable vector fonts of good quality for Macintosh, later also for Windows. TrueType fonts typically have the extension .ttf. The format is sort of portable so that TTF fonts from large Windows desktops also work well on [PocketPC]s. I like most the quick reaction: you can resize a font in a Tk widget e.g. with a [scale] and have it react in about real time.

[KPV]: Microsoft TrueType page is http://www.microsoft.com/typography/users.htm.
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[BR]: TrueType was made popular by its support in [Microsoft Windows] since 3.1 (?) and
on Apple's [MacOS].

Since the creation of the [FreeType] library TrueType fonts are supported by [X11]-based
system in various forms.  Currently the font server in XFree86 and its derivates supports
TrueType through this library.  More sophisticated support on X11 is possible with 
the Xft library (there is a compile-time switch for Tk to use this, see [Xft support]).

TrueType is not only scalable (as opposed to the bitmapped fonts that are still
the basis of X11 text rendering) it is also an extensible format, which means that
vendors can add new data if they need that for more complicated scripts.

There are currently two major such extension systems on the market, OpenType
[http://www.opentype.com] by Adobe and Microsoft and AAT
[http://developer.apple.com/fonts/] by Apple (both sites also have the base
specifications).  Both allow to add information into fonts about ligatures,
shaping and bidi.  Both extensions can coexist in the same font file.

OpenType is supported by [Microsoft Windows] and on [X11] by Pango (part of [GTK]),
AAT is supported by [MacOS X].  It is planned to get better support for OpenType on
Unix systems, see the "FreeType Layout" link [http://www.freetype.org/ftlayout/index.html]
on the [FreeType] site.

Curiously, while Adobe has co-authored OpenType, and PostScript does have basic
TrueType support, PostScript does not seem to use the OpenType extensions yet
automatically.  Unless somebody can point me to some better information on that
question?
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An alternative for scalable fonts, but less widely used on displays, are [Postscript]
fonts.
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[[
[Category Characters]
]]