What is the difference between TrueType fonts and Type-1 fonts?

Question

What is the difference between TrueType fonts and Type-1 fonts?

Answer 1

The Postscript Type-1 specification was created by Adobe back in 1985 or so. Type-1 fonts are vector based. You can find the specification in "Adobe Type 1. Font Format.".

TrueType fonts were defined by Apple a couple of years earlier so True Type and PostScript were competitors in the 1990s. Microsoft picked up True Type for the native Windows font format in the beginning 1990s (for using PostScript, additional tools like Adobe Type manager were necessary).

Today, Microsoft is fading out support for PostScript fonts. Try using one as an UI font in Vista. Good luck ;-)

As a successor of TrueType, Microsoft (I think together with Adobe) created the Open Type (anytime around 2000) format and Adobe converted their whole font library into the new format (you can still get them as Type-1 fonts).