What are the differences between FreeType 1.x and FreeType 2 ?
The biggest differences are that: • FT1 only supports the TrueType format, while FT2 does a lot more. • The FT2 API is simpler as well as more powerful than the FT1 API, • FT1 includes an extension to support OpenType text layout processing. This support is not part of FT2, but has been moved to a distinct project, called FreeType Layout. ( FT Layout is not currently available though..) I.6 Is FreeType 2 backwards compatible with FreeType 1.x? Not directly, though we had the project to provide an optional binary compatibility layer on top of it in order to easily re-link applications with the new version. However, this idea has been dropped as it is possible to install and use the two versions independently on any system (read: no namespace conflicts). The FreeType 2 API is a lot simpler than the one in 1.x while being much more powerful. We thus encourage you to adapt your source code to it as this should not involve much work. I.6 Can I use FreeType 2 to edit fonts or create new ones
The biggest differences are as follows. • FreeType 1 only supports the TrueType format, while FreeType 2 supports a lot more. • The FreeType 2 API is simpler as well as more powerful than the FreeType 1 API. • FreeType 1 includes an extension to support OpenType text layout processing. This support hasn’t become part of FreeType 2; a much improved version is now part of the Pango library.
