Editing FreeType (section)

==History==
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,<ref name="osnews-dt-interview"/> including an interpreter for handling TrueType bytecode. Originally written in the [[Pascal programming language]], it was ported in 1997 by Robert Wilhelm to [[C (programming language)|C]].<ref name="history"/><ref name="freetype2.1.9faq">{{cite web |title= The FreeType 2 FAQ  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090718090712/http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/documentation/freetype-2.1.9/docs/ft2faq.html |archive-date=18 July 2009 |url=http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/documentation/freetype-2.1.9/docs/ft2faq.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.experts123.com/q/what-are-the-differences-between-freetype-1.x-and-freetype-2.html |title=What are the differences between FreeType 1.x and FreeType 2 ? |publisher=Experts123.com |access-date=2014-04-04}}</ref>

FreeType 1 had support only for the TrueType font format, but it included an extension to support [[OpenType]] text layout features.

===Major rewrite 2.0===
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".<ref name="freetype2faq">{{cite web |url=https://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/ft2faq.html |title=FreeType 2 FAQ |work=FreeType 2  |access-date=July 26, 2011 |ref=features}}</ref> FreeType 2 is not backward-compatible with FreeType 1 but the developers stated that moving from FreeType 1 to FreeType 2 poses little difficulty.<ref name="freetype2faq"/> As ''text 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/HarfBuzz |title=HarfBuzz |publisher=Freedesktop.org |access-date=2014-04-04}}</ref>

===Patent conflicts===
In 1999, the Freetype project was informed by [[Apple Inc.|Apple Incorporated]] that FreeType was [[Patent infringement|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 [[FreeBSD]] or [[Linux]], had FreeType included with [[font hinting]] functionality disabled or degraded to avoid the issue of [[software patent]]s held by Apple Inc.<ref name="patents">{{cite web |url=https://www.freetype.org/patents.html |title=FreeType and Patents |date=July 4, 2010 |work=FreeType |publisher=SourceForge, Inc. |access-date=March 31, 2011 |ref=features}}</ref>

Since May 2010, all conflicting software patents related to font hinting have expired,<ref name="patents"/> 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 [[Yellowdog Updater, Modified|yum]] repository to the free repository.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/development/rawhide/source/SRPMS/repoview/freetype-freeworld.html |title=RepoView: RPM Fusion (Fedora - free) development Source RPM Packages |publisher=Download1.rpmfusion.org |date=2014-03-11 |access-date=2014-04-04}}</ref>

Since August 2019, all conflicting software patents related to ClearType color filtering have expired,<ref name="patents" /> allowing FreeType to use ClearType color filtering method in 2.10.3.

===Compact Font Format engine donation===
In 2013 Adobe donated a [[PostScript fonts#Compact Font Format|Compact Font Format]] rendering engine to the FreeType project which integrated it and made it the default with version 2.5.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://blog.typekit.com/2013/05/01/adobe-contributes-cff-rasterizer-to-freetype/| title=Adobe contributes font rasterizer technology to FreeType |website=Adobe TypeKit Blog |date=1 May 2013 |first=Nicole |last=Miñoza}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url=https://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2013/06/youve-got-cff.html |title=You've Got CFF!  |date=19 June 2013 |website=Google Open Source Blog }}</ref>