UFST – Universal Font Scaling Technology

Font Rendering Subsystem for Printers Compatible with PCL, PostScript and Other Font Standards

Monotype Imaging’s UFST® subsystem lets OEMs build printer devices that are compatible with either the Adobe® PostScript® or Hewlett-Packard® PCL® printing languages, the leading industry standards. The technology is also compatible with devices that emulate both standards. Additionally, UFST supports the PDF, XHTML and XPS printing languages.

The UFST subsystem reads, interprets and processes hinted font data to rapidly generate scaled character bitmaps, graymaps or grid-aligned outlines. The fast, compact solution offers a lower ROM cost than alternative font rendering systems and is the only one that uses industry-standard trademarked font names and font metrics, ensuring compatibility with printers based on font standards by HP and Adobe.

Compatibility in a Small Footprint
The UFST subsystem works with Monotype Imaging’s patented MicroType® font compression technology, which reduces the MTI/HP 45 font collection to only 650KB. Just 1.3MB of ROM is required for our PostScript 3-compatible fonts, much less than the 2MB required for alternative subsystems. OEMs can also achieve dual-emulation capabilities by combining the MTI/HP 45 and MTI/PS 35 or 136 collections into a single, memory-efficient ROM block. Every font is compatible with its HP or Adobe counterpart in both design and metrics.

Flexibility and Adherence to Industry Standards
All industry-standard font rasterizers such as the TrueType® and PostScript subsystems are supported, and the UFST subsystem supports OpenType® CFF (Compact Font Format), as well as Monotype Imaging’s MicroType and ACT™ (Asian Compression for TrueType™) font compression technologies. The UFST subsystem also supports composite, stroke-based fonts for integrating Asian languages – inherently large in file size – using the smallest possible file size.

Control Panel Display Support
Font rendering capabilities are leveraged by Monotype Imaging’s control panel display solution. OEMs already working with the UFST subsystem in the print environment can add Monotype Imaging’s control panel display solution with a reduced incremental file size. Click here to learn more.

Font Management Capability
Monotype Imaging’s Font Manager allows users to more easily manage large collections of TrueType and Type 1 fonts on Microsoft® Windows® computers. Simple functions are available including installing and uninstalling fonts, viewing font samples on screen, sorting alphabetically or by font format, creating font groups and printing font lists. The Font Manager includes fonts that are compatible with the PCL or PostScript standards, or OEMs can integrate custom font sets to meet specific market needs.

UFST Benefits
   • Compatibility with HP PCL 6, 5e and 5c font standards
   • Compatibility with PostScript 3 and PostScript Level 2 font standards
   • Compatibility with PCL/PostScript dual-emulation systems
   • High-performance, small code size
   • Industry-standard trademarked typeface names
   • Asian font support using small, stroke-based fonts

In addition, the UFST solution supports:
   • Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin 1, 2, 5 and 6 character sets
   • Euro currency character in every font (single Euro provided for all Adobe® fonts)
   • Customized font collections
   • Industry-standard font rasterizers and font formats
   • Embedded bitmaps in TrueType fonts
   • 1-bit special effects: shadowing, embossing, engraving and outlining
   • Support for native 64-bit systems
   • HP’s Format 10 and Format 11 PCLEOs
   • Central European character set (provided in MTI/PS3 136 font set)
   • Multiple Master fonts (2 provided in MTI/PS3 136 font set)
   • Grayscale
   • Reentrancy
   • Multithreading
   • Pseudo emboldening
   • Combined ROM disk access