UniqueID and XUID — FontForge 20201107 documentation

# UniqueID and XUID

> C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot;
> C++ makes it harder, but when you do,
> it blows away your whole leg.”

> —Bjarne Stroustrup

From: Thomas Phinney of Adobe
Subject: [OpenType] Why you don’t need UniqueIDs
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 10:04:41 -0800
Neither Type 1 nor OpenType CFF fonts require PostScript UniqueIDs.
Back in the mid-80s, when printing might be done on a 57K serial connection
and printers might have 8 MHz processors, the caching of device-generated
bitmaps enabled by UniqueIDs made a noticeable speed difference. With today’s
connection bandwidths and printers, the printing speed difference was
insignificant in our tests (conducted around 2002), and certainly not enough
to outweigh the risks of collisions between UniqueIDs for different fonts and
the trouble of tracking the ID numbers.
For these reasons, Adobe stopped using UniqueIDs (and XUIDs) in our own
OpenType CFF fonts. If we still made Type 1 fonts, we wouldn’t use UniqueIDs
for them, either.
You may of course continue to use UniqueIDs, it’s just that they are not
necessary.
Regards,
T
Thomas W. Phinney
Program Manager
Fonts & Core Technologies
Adobe Systems