Ascender Font System to Include Font Rasterizer Licensed from Microsoft

CreativePro Staff

Ascender Corporation, a leading provider of fonts for hardware & software developers, today announced that they have entered into an agreement with Microsoft which enables Ascender to distribute Microsoft’s industry leading font rasterizer.
Ascender plans to offer the Microsoft rasterizer as part of its Ascender Font System, a rapidly developing platform which provides consumer electronics and mobile device manufacturers with the ability to render high quality, hinted font data to their device screens. The Ascender Font System, which can be compiled for many environments, provides support for nearly any language required.
“This license allows us to deliver the Microsoft rasterizer as part of our font rendering platform to devices, together with the wide selection of Microsoft and Ascender fonts we offer. Manufacturers wishing to support TrueType font hinting, the typographic instructions necessary to achieve quality font appearance, in their devices can now do so by licensing the Ascender Font System fonts,” said Steve Kuhlman, Vice-President of Ascender Corporation. “This is a good example of how companies can collaborate, license their intellectual property and further innovate to support customer needs.”

“Since its introduction as part of Windows 3.1, our font rasterizer has been used by millions of users, with numerous updates to improve its security and stability. It has become the standard by which other rendering technologies are judged,” said Bill Hill, Director of Advanced Reading Technology at Microsoft. “Licensing our intellectual property, such as the font rasterizer, creates opportunities for others to benefit from our research and development investments.”
The Microsoft rasterizer uses patented TrueType rendering algorithms. This allows hinted TrueType fonts to be rendered with greater accuracy, improving the on-screen rendering of fonts. The opportunity to render hinted fonts has consistently been sought after by consumer electronics, mobile devices, industrial displays and many other products with which feature a screen to display text.
“Hardware developers now have a tremendous opportunity to enhance their devices,” said Ira Mirochnick, President of Ascender Corporation. “By incorporating the Ascender Font System fonts into their devices, developers will address the challenging issue of readability and legibility, and will solve multilingual challenges.”
More information on the Ascender Font System can be found at https://www.ascendercorp.com/fontengines.html
About Ascender
Ascender® Corporation is a leading provider of advanced font products specializing in type design, font development and licensing. Ascender’s founders are font industry experts and have been involved in developing some of the most important and influential fonts used in computers and mobile devices. Ascender provides multilingual, custom font development for a wide range of customers including creative professionals, enterprises and hardware & software developers. Ascender also provides fonts for download to graphic designers and consumers through the Ascender Font Store website.