Bitstream Releases Latest Version of its Font Technology

Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS) today announced the latest upgrade to the company's font technology, Bitstream Panorama™ and Bitstream Font Fusion™. Bitstream Panorama is the worldwide text composition engine that enables developers to compose and render text in any language. Bitstream’s Font Fusion is a text rendering solution that offers developers the fastest rendering speeds and best possible text output of any font engine on the market today.

Both Panorama 7.0 and Font Fusion 7.0 are available now.

Bitstream Panorama 7.0

With Bitstream Panorama, OEMs and developers can layout, position, substitute and render characters in all of the world’s languages via a single, compact API. The latest version of Bitstream Panorama, version 7.0, builds on the strength of the product by adding new features that expand its capabilities on different operating systems, increase performance, and offer support for new languages.

Panorama is now available as a plug-in for iOS and Android operating systems. The plug-in allows access to features like better layout control, complex script support not supported by the base system, and support for non-TTF font formats.

Panorama 7.0 also includes a scaling feature which allows users to perform a pinching effect on rendered text, making this kind of layout faster.

In addition, Panorama 7.0 also supports:

• Sinhala and Tibetan Script - The Sinhala script is used mainly in Sri Lanka, while the Tibetan script is used in Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal and northern areas of India.
• Native OTF is supported in Panorama 7.0. This advanced feature provides the option to apply OTF features like superscript, subscript, fractions, scientific inferiors, etc. even if the font does not support them.
• Increased performance using OTFP coverage data by using embedded preprocessed data directly within the fonts.
• Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) with open type fonts (OTF).
• Dynamic Font Array which allows any number of fonts at run time.

Bitstream Font Fusion 7.0

Bitstream’s Font Fusion provides the highest quality, fastest text output on any device, at any resolution. Its small footprint is particularly well suited for mobile devices. It can render virtually any font format, including bitmap, TrueType and OpenType.

Font Fusion 7.0 includes:

• Support for optical axis of Multiple Master (MM) fonts and the addition of a new API that works on the actual rendered width of a device.
• A new feature called RenderPath that enables passing of path data to Font Fusion. Font Fusion will then render the path and return a bitmap buffer.
• SmartScale scales taller accented characters to not exceed the standard capital letter height. This new feature in Font Fusion 7.0 allows the actual height limit to be specified.

• Support for the Standard Encoded Accented Character (SEAC) command that allows the font to specify the base character and the accent character and offset in a single “endchar” command.
• The addition of new filters, including a trim filter that removes all the blank lines from the rendered glyph and updates glyph metrics accordingly.
• Several enhancements to the Font Manager, including Unicode mapping which provides an easy way to specify different fonts for different Unicode ranges.

About Bitstream

Bitstream Inc. develops software technologies and applications for the graphic art and mobile communications industries. Bitstream’s award-winning fonts and font technologies enable device manufacturers and application developers to render the highest quality text in any language, on any device, at any resolution. The company’s MyFonts brand is the world’s leading provider of fonts to consumers. Bitstream’s Pageflex brand enables marketers to easily produce customized communications in print, email and online. The company’s latest offering is the BOLT mobile browser, which has been installed by millions of users worldwide since its release in February 2009. For more information visit www.bitstream.com.

Bitstream and Font Fusion, are registered trademarks and the Bitstream logo and Bitstream Panorama are trademarks of Bitstream Inc. Other technologies and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.