| Bitstream Font Fusion | |
| Developer: | Bitstream Inc. |
| Released: | October 1999 |
| Latest Release Version: | 6.0 |
| Latest Release Date: | May 10, 2011 |
| Operating System: | Platform Independent |
| Genre: | Font Engine |
| License: | Proprietary EULA |
| Website: | http://www.bitstream.com/fonttechnology/font_fusion.html |
Bitstream Font Fusion is a small, fast, object-oriented font engine written in ANSI C capable of rendering high-quality text on any platform, any device, and at any resolution. The entire source code is portable, optimized, and executes independent of operating system and processor. The font engine is capable of rendering 2,400-3,300 characters per second on a 100 MIPS CPU.[1]
Font Fusion is designed such that it can meet the memory and performance requirements, even if the Asian languages that contain thousands of characters are to be supported. Font Fusion is also the core technology behind other Bitstream products, Panorama, ThunderHawk and myMMS.
In late 1980s, Sampo Kaasila, lead developer of TrueType and founder of Type Solutions (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Bitstream Inc.) designed T2K, a font renderer, which provided an object-oriented design, advanced architecture and algorithms, and was capable, to embed in all sorts of devices. Later in 1998, Bitstream acquired Type solutions and T2K evolved into Bitstream's font rasterizer, called Font Fusion.
| Major version | Minor version | Release date | Significant changes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Version 1 | 1.0 | October 28, 1999 | Initial release. | |
| Version 2 | 2.0 | July 18, 2000 | Japanese/Korean Fonts support. Improved display of text for Internet appliances and wireless devices | |
| 2.1 | June 12, 2001 | Includes an optional 1.23 MB unified stroke-based font with 30,000 CJK characters | ||
| 2.2 | January 29, 2002 | Includes the Wireless Font Set (four proportional, four monospaced, and one symbol font), designed specifically for handheld and wireless devices | ||
| 2.3 | April 2, 2002 | OpenType Support. Support for FFC standards for closed captioning. Character edge effects. Pen Styles, Character Offsetting, and Pen Sizes. New CCTV font set. | ||
| 2.4 | April 8, 2003 | Enhanced support for OpenType and Type 1 fonts allowing access to all characters. Plug-in filter for embedding of bitmaps. | ||
| 2.5 | June 22, 2004 | Integration support for Panorama (enhanced support for text composition with simultaneous release of Bitstream Panorama). Support to modify the color tables. Improved stroke-based font output. | ||
| Version 3 | 3.0 | June 6, 2005 | New support for Font compression at all font formats | |
| 3.1 | November 3, 2005 | Caching for memory-constrained consumer devices and mobile phones | ||
| 3.2 | April 25, 2006 | Optimized performance for mobile handsets and consumer electronics devices. Improved algorithms for compressed fonts. Optimized heap usage with fewer memory blocks. Reduced cache fragmentation | ||
| 3.3 | November 6, 2006 | Improved font rendering speed for compressed fonts. | ||
| Version 4 | 4.0 | September 24, 2007 | Extension for BREW and new methods to create outline of the characters | |
| 4.5 | April 10, 2008 | Includes Smart Scale technology that dynamically scales the extended characters to fit within the device's preset bounding box. 32-bit Unicode support for CJK font files with extended CMAPs for 32-bit Unicode values. Support for windows bitmap font format FNT/FON and CID-keyed fonts | ||
| Version 5 | 5.0 | July 15, 2009 | Includes support for fractional sizes, an optimized PFR format, optional OTF support, vertical processing, format 16 font headers, and enhanced printer support. | |
| Version 6 | 6.0 | May 10, 2011 | Includes support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF), OpenType fonts, Multiple Master Postscript Fonts, Type1 fonts and provides an optional Android wrapper add-on. Also includes an enhanced Font Manager and 32-bit filter tags for increased font customization and optimization. |
Consumer Electronic Devices, Mobile Handset, Set-top box, Digital TV, Printer, Printer Controller, Fax Machine, Multi-function Device, Medical Imaging Device, GPS System, Automobile Display, and other Embedded System
Web application, Graphics application, Gaming application
Font Fusion plug-in is available for the Symbian OS[2] as a dynamic-link library (DLL).[3] The plug-in inherits all the features supported by the core Font Fusion engine.
Font Fusion plug-in for BREW[4] platform provides a standard font-rendering framework that implements different BREW interfaces, supporting scalable and multilingual text.
Font Fusion framework is available for Qtopia[5] allowing any third party font rendering engine to work as plug-in with the Qt/Qtopia application platform. The framework also adds the capability to have any font format compatibility with Qt/Qtopia.