TTF (TrueType Font)
TrueType is a font format that uses quadratic Bezier curves to define glyph outlines. It was the first scalable font technology available to consumers and remains one of the most common font formats on desktop operating systems.
MIME Type
font/ttf
Type
Binary
Compression
Lossless
Advantages
- + Universal support on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- + Built-in hinting for crisp screen rendering at small sizes
- + Mature format with decades of tooling support
Disadvantages
- − Larger file sizes than WOFF2 for web delivery
- − Quadratic curves are less precise than OpenType's cubic Bezier
- − No built-in OpenType Layout features in the original spec
When to Use .TTF
Use TTF for desktop applications and when broad OS support is needed; for web, use WOFF2 for better compression.
Technical Details
TTF files contain glyph outlines using quadratic Bezier splines, hinting instructions for screen rendering, and multiple tables for metrics, kerning, and name data. TrueType uses a sfnt container format.
History
Apple developed TrueType in the late 1980s as an alternative to Adobe's Type 1 fonts. Microsoft licensed TrueType for Windows 3.1 (1992), making it the standard font format for PCs.