In brief: Microsoft has updated the list of Windows features that are no longer being developed and likely to be removed from future editions of the OS. The August 2024 revision added Adobe Type1 fonts as a soon-to-be unsupported technology in the Windows ecosystem.
A year after Adobe announced the end of support for PostScript Type1 (or “Type 1”) fonts, Microsoft is now doing the same. The feature will be removed in a future release of the OS, and Redmond suggests users move forward by erasing any dependencies on this font type from Windows settings.
Adobe’s first deprecation announcement dates back to 2021. The company said that Type 1 fonts, which are also known as PS1 or Multiple Master fonts, are an old format that has long been replaced by alternative solutions. Type 1 fonts were introduced by Adobe in 1984 as a proprietary specification, and they were designed to be used with Adobe Type Manager software and PostScript printers.
Compatibility with Type 1 fonts was later extended thanks to native support on macOS and Windows (2000). Adobe products stopped supporting the technology altogether in January 2023, starting with Photoshop 23.0 and other updated releases of the company’s many design tools. Most browsers and mobile operating systems do not support Type 1 fonts anyway, Adobe warned, while modern alternatives such as OpenType fonts offer more robust technical advancements.
Fonts can be a rather serious affair in the desktop publishing world. Developers and designers have tried to create a visually satisfying, truly interoperable typographic technology since the dawn of computing. PostScript, a page description language which dictates the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than the actual output bitmap graphics, was developed by Adobe Systems in 1984.
The first seeds of the technology date back to 1976 though, when Xerox PARC researchers developed the first laser printer and a standard to define page images. Microsoft is now recommending application developers and “content owners” test their products and data files after uninstalling Adobe Type1 fonts from their Windows setup.
Adobe started focusing on the more versatile OpenType fonts in 1996, promoting the cross-platform file format that was jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft. The company has converted the entire Adobe Type Library into “thousands” of new OpenType fonts as well.
