N.B. An asterisk before a word means it has its own entry in the glossary.

Ikarus

Ikarus was the original digital *outline type technology, developed through the 1970s by Peter Karow at URW in Hamburg. Originally running only on expensive graphics workstations, Ikarus is available now for Macintosh, Windows and Unix workstations from URW++. TrueType and Type 1 fonts can be generated, but its TrueType *hinting capabilities are limited - like most font editing tools.

Incubator

A series of programs (discontinued) from Type Solutions for creating stylistic variants of existing fonts. Initial versions could adjust weight, contrast, width and slant. Then came the "Pro" version which could adjust x-height too. The final version could make *GX *variations fonts - with *axes for weight, width, etc. - automatically from a single input font. Of course, most type designers would throw up their hands in horror at the mere concept...

instruction

A low-level program code in a TrueType *glyph description, *preprogram or *font program, specifying a particular action to perform on the current outline, or on other data structures, or on the program's own flow of control. As well as manipulating control points, TrueType instructions include looping, conditional branching and *function calls, arithmetic and logical operations.