Monotype Imaging Introduces Japanese and Traditional Chinese SmartHint Fonts.

Engineered for OEMs and Developers of Consumer Devices Requiring High-Quality East Asian Text Display

WOBURN, Mass. & SALFORDS, Surrey, England -- Monotype Imaging Inc., a global leader in text imaging solutions, has added Japanese and Traditional Chinese fonts to the company's lineup of East Asian, scalable typefaces enhanced with SmartHint[TM] technology. Engineered for clarity and readability on mobile phones, printer control panels, digital cameras and other displays, the fonts are designed to preserve high legibility of East Asian characters on small screens.

"Manufacturers and developers of small consumer electronics devices face unique challenges when it comes to the clear and consistent display of East Asian text," said John Seguin, executive vice president of Monotype Imaging. "SmartHint technology offers two major benefits: First, it ensures the highly legible display of East Asian text at small sizes, including characters that are extremely intricate in design. Second, the technology eliminates the need for developers to embed non-scalable, fixed-in-size bitmap fonts to support small sizes. One scalable font for each design is all that's needed, allowing memory to be conserved and production complexities to be reduced. These benefits help manufacturers and developers streamline production and bring products to market faster."

The new Traditional Chinese SmartHint font was designed at China Type Design Limited, the Monotype Imaging subsidiary based in Hong Kong that also created the first SmartHint font, a Simplified Chinese design introduced last September. China Type also produced the newly released Japanese SmartHint font, based on the TB Gothic[TM] typeface, originally designed by TypeBank Co. Ltd., a Tokyo-based typeface foundry. TypeBank collaborated with Monotype Imaging to provide quality assurance guidance to ensure that the aesthetic qualities of the typeface would meet Japanese expectations.

"Working closely with TypeBank and China Type, we believe these modern designs will appeal to local markets in need of compact, high-quality East Asian text solutions for the small screen," said Geoff Greve, vice president of font development at Monotype Imaging. "In addition to being hand-tuned for readability, characters have been engineered to fit predictably within an em square - the amount of space typically allotted for each character on mobile phones and other small displays."

Monotype Imaging's SmartHint Japanese font includes 7,488 characters and supports the Japanese CP932 character set, used in Microsoft([R]) Windows([R]) operating systems. The character set encompasses the JIS 0208 and JIS 0201 character sets, as well as NEC special characters, NEC-selected IBM extended characters and IBM extended characters.

To meet separate language requirements for Taiwanese and Hong Kong markets, the new SmartHint Traditional Chinese font is available in two options. While each supports the Big5 Chinese character set, which comprises 13,051 Han characters and 408 symbols, an additional 4,941 characters have been included for the Hong Kong version. "We worked with typographic experts from Hong Kong and Mainland China to create the Traditional Chinese SmartHint design," said Ricky Chun, managing director of China Type. "Our focus was to ensure that every single character was properly designed to achieve superior display quality at all sizes. While the design is based on the Hei style, the structure of the characters has been modified to be more open to achieve maximum legibility at lower resolutions."

Monotype Imaging's patent-pending SmartHint method of character fine-tuning - or hinting - was devised by China Type and Monotype Imaging to improve East Asian text display quality while eliminating the need to embed bitmap fonts to handle small-sized text. "At larger sizes, SmartHint characters are more uniform and regular. At smaller sizes, correct spatial relationships are preserved. In some cases, secondary strokes are removed from the character without affecting the recognition of those characters. Letterforms remain clear and legible," Greve said. "The SmartHint method also differs from other hinting techniques as it reduces the number of instructions required for each hint, thereby reducing file size and storage requirements."

All SmartHint fonts, which are also included in Monotype Imaging's ESQ([R]) (Enhanced Screen Quality) Mobile collection, work with version 3.0 and above of the iType([R]) font engine, the company's scalable font rendering subsystem. Based on the TrueType([R]) and OpenType([R]) industry-standard font formats, the iType font engine enables manufacturers and developers of memory-constrained devices to build products efficiently that can quickly generate highly legible text. In addition to TrueType and OpenType-based fonts, the iType font engine supports custom typefaces, bitmaps, embedded bitmaps and font subsets. The technology works with Monotype Imaging's WorldType([R]) Layout Engine, a software library that enables the composition, positioning and rendering of multilingual text, including complex scripts such as Arabic, Hindi and Thai.

The previously released Simplified Chinese SmartHint typeface, which is included in the iType 3.0 software developer kit, is available today in two choices to support either the GBK Chinese standard character set of approximately 21,000 characters or the GBK-compatible GB 18030 character set with more than 28,000 characters. The new Traditional Chinese and Japanese SmartHint fonts are now available from Monotype Imaging individually and will be included later this year in the next release of the iType SDK.

About Monotype Imaging

Based in Woburn, Mass. with regional offices in the U.K., Germany (Linotype), Mt. Prospect, Ill., Redwood City, Calif., Boulder, Colo., Japan and China, Monotype Imaging is a global provider of text imaging solutions for manufacturers and developers of consumer electronics devices including laser printers, copiers, mobile phones, digital televisions, set-top boxes, digital cameras and software applications and operating systems. The company also provides printer drivers and color imaging technologies to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). Monotype Imaging technologies are combined with access to more than 9,000 typefaces from the Monotype([R]), Linotype([R]) and ITC([R]) typeface libraries - home to some of the world's most widely used designs, including the Times New Roman([R]), Helvetica([R]) and ITC Franklin Gothic[TM] typefaces. Fonts are licensed to creative and business professionals through custom font designs, direct sales or e-commerce portals. Monotype Imaging offers fonts and industry-standard solutions that support all of the world's major languages. Information about the company and its products can be found at www.monotypeimaging.com, www.fonts.com, www.linotype.com, www.monotypefonts.com, www.itcfonts.com, www.customfonts.com, www.fontwise.com and www.faces.co.uk.

Monotype, ESQ, iType and WorldType are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. SmartHint and Fonts.com are trademarks of Monotype Imaging Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Times New Roman is a trademark of The Monotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. ITC is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. ITC Franklin Gothic is a trademark of International Typeface Corp. which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Linotype is a registered trademark of Linotype GmbH in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Helvetica is a trademark of Linotype Corp. registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain jurisdictions in the name of Linotype Corp. or its licensee Linotype GmbH. TB Gothic is a trademark of TypeBank Co., Ltd. TrueType is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. OpenType is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the U. S. and/or other countries. (c) 2007 Monotype Imaging Inc. All rights reserved.