Tahoma (typeface)
Category | Sans-serif |
---|---|
Classification | Humanist |
Designer(s) | Matthew Carter |
Foundry | Microsoft |
Date released | 1994 |
Variations | Nina |
Tahoma is a
While similar to Verdana, Tahoma has a narrower body, smaller counters, much tighter letter spacing, and a more complete Unicode character set. Carter first designed Tahoma as a bitmap font, then "carefully wrapped" TrueType outlines around those bitmaps.[1] Carter based the bold weight on a double pixel width, rendering it closer to a heavy or black weight. In contrast with some other sans-serif typefaces, including Arial, the uppercase "I" (eye) is distinguishable from lowercase "l" (ell), which is especially important in technical publications. Since 2010, Ascender Corporation has offered italic and small caps versions of Tahoma.
Tahoma is often compared with Frutiger, another humanist sans-serif typeface.[citation needed] In an interview by Daniel Will-Harris, Carter acknowledged that Tahoma has some similarities with his earlier Bell Centennial typeface.[1]
The Tahoma typeface family was named after the Native American name for the stratovolcano Mount Rainier (Mount Tahoma),[2] which is a prominent feature of the southern landscape around the Seattle metropolitan area.
Bundling
Tahoma was an official font supplied with Office 97, Office 2000, and Office XP,[3] and was freely distributed with Word Viewer 97.[4]
Tahoma was the default screen font used by
In 2007,
As of 2016, Tahoma is still widely in use as a standard in multiple applications and programming environments. For example, a new
Free replacement
The
See also
References
- ^ a b Will-Harris, Daniel (2003). "Georgia & Verdana: Typefaces Designed for the Screen (finally)". TypoFiles. Retrieved January 16, 2007.
- KCTS 9 Seattle. Distributed by Questar Entertainment.
- ^ "Fonts that are installed with Office" Microsoft, retrieved April 24, 2011.
- ^ Dan Kegel. "winhelp, Vector NTI, molecular biologists" WineHQ.org, September 4, 2007. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
- ^ As of Wine version 0.9.47 Version 0.9.47 release announcement WineHQ.org, retrieved May 22, 2009.