Microsoft Visual TrueType

What is it?
Microsoft Visual TrueType is a professional-level, font-development tool for visualizing and graphically
defining relationships between features within characters in a font so that the font renders beautifully
and crisply on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

What’s new?
Version 6.20 [March, 2017 release]
The following are the changes since the 6.10 [February, 2016 release] release of VTT:

 Support for Open Type Font Variations. You can use VTT to hint variable fonts using the new
Variation CVT and Variation Windows, described below. VTT will generate a cvar table based on
CVTs shown in the Variation CVT window. Currently, VTT only supports varying CVTs for masters
at the extrema of variable font axes. Support for intermediate cvar variations (e.g. for
intermediate named instances) is in the plans for a future release. Documentation is
forthcoming, but a blog post with workflow and instructions will soon appear at
http://aka.ms/vtt-variations.

o Variation CVT Window. You can use this window to select which variable font instance
you would like to proof in the Waterfall, Text Sample, and Variation Windows (see
below). When you select a master instance, you can adjust the CVTs for that instance;
just type a change and hit Ctrl-R to recompile. The Variation CVT window will show you
which CVTs vary across the font and how they differ from the default instance. If you
select an intermediate instance, you can inspect the interpolated CVTs for that instance.
VTT does not yet support editing intermediate instance CVTs.

o Variation Window. The Variation window shows you the current glyph outline and hints,
just like the Main window, for the instance selected variable font instance (see above).
With both the Main and Variation windows up, you can edit hints in the Main window
and see the impact on variations in the Variation window. Because hints in a variable
font are associated with the default instance and merely follow interpolated CVTs for
other instances, you can only edit hints in the Main window.

 Exporting Control Program to XML. VTT 6.01 added the ability to dump a fonts hints to an XML
file for import into other fonts. Unfortunately, this did not include the Control Program. VTT 6.20
will now include the Control Program in XML export and import.
What’s new?
Version 6.10 [February, 2016 release]

The following are the changes since the 6.01 [August 31, 2015 release] release of VTT:

 New: Brand new Icon for VTT, & new icons for the Graphical Hinting interface.
 New: Autohinter for Latin and East Asian fonts. The new Autohinting modes makes use of a
new lightweight hinting strategy, that is best suited to today’s rendering environments, such as
DirectWrite. Most Autohinters generate low level hinting instructions that you cannot easily edit
or improve. This new Autohinter generates high-level hints that you can easily edit via VTT’s
graphical user interface.
 New: Ability to automatically generate a ‘Control Value Table’ for Latin fonts, saving you time,
so that you can begin adding ‘Visual hints’ to your font straight away, without the need to
measure the font, and manually fill in the relevant CVT entries.
 New: Error and Warnings Limit. When you open a font, VTT will show a list of errors and
warnings it detects in a font. If there are many errors and warnings in the font, this may slow
down the process of opening a font file. To speed up opening time, you can set a limit on how
many errors and warnings to display.

 New: Legacy Compile. Set this option to ensure that your font will compile exactly the same as it
did in Versions 4 and below of VTT.

 New: Check box added to allow future suppression of Import binary hints message when
opening a font with no source data.
 Various bug fixes related to performance.

What’s new?
Version 6.01 [August 31, 2015 release]

The following are the changes since the 4.2 release of VTT:

 Now available via the download center! This and future releases will be freely available on the
Microsoft Download Center. No more faxing in license agreements.

 Color font support (COLR/CPAL tables). Glyphs with color layers defined in the COLR and CPAL
tables render in color throughout VTT so you can proof color glyphs.

 Updated rasterizer. The rasterizer has been updated to be even more accurate, and now
includes the ClearType Grey rendering mode used by default in Windows 8.

 Export / Import hints from XML. Export or import VTTTalk and all low-level code to/from an
XLM file. Handy for doing global find and replace operations in a text editor, or for moving hints
to another point-for-point compatible font. See the help file within VTT for more details.
 Import binary font hints. When opening fonts without VTT source data, you can import the
binary data to low-level code you can edit.

 Unicode sample text. Sample text and test strings now support Unicode characters. You can also
jump to any character by entering its Unicode value in the Goto Character dialog.

 New keyboard shortcuts. You can press Ctrl + Up arrow and Ctrl + Down arrow to quickly change
resolutions. We also added shortcuts to turn off many of the rasterization options (e.g.
Ctrl + Shift + G for ClearType Grey, Ctrl + Shift + F for subpixel positioning, etc). For details, see
the keyboard shortcut section of the online help within VTT.

 Use the space bar to pan. Like many other font design applications, you can now hold down the
space bar and drag the mouse cursor in order to pan the main window. The left shift key
continues to work for panning as in past versions of VTT.

 Single test string. The main window now only shows one test string. This test string shows text
with hinted advance widths. The second test string, which showed text with unhinted advance
widths (i.e. metrics), has been removed.

 PostScript names now visible. If present, the PostScript name for the current glyph is shown in
the status area at the top of the main window.

 New pixel grid display. The Show Grid display option now shows a border around all pixels, not
just activated pixels

 Support for high-dpi display. VTT renders everything without any operating system display
scaling, so that the rasterizations you see are exactly what you would get.