File size. A full "Super OTF" version of Arial that includes Western, CE, Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, and Baltic character sets can be 500KB–1MB. A Western-only version (Version 701 Western) is often under 200KB. In the era of dial-up internet and limited storage (early 2000s), smaller file sizes meant faster downloads and less disk usage. Even today, web font services often serve subsetted fonts for performance.
The phrase "arialnormal opentype truetype version 701 western top" is more than a clumsy SEO keyword. It is a timestamp, a platform artifact, and a testament to the messy evolution of digital type. For nearly two decades, this exact font file rendered billions of HR reports, medical forms, legal documents, and email signatures across Windows XP workstations.
As of 2025, version 701 is obsolete for new design work. But it remains a critical piece of backward compatibility. Emulators, document parsers, and digital forensics tools must recognize it. The next time you see an old PDF that refuses to reflow text correctly, or a legacy kiosk system that suddenly shows tofu blocks (◻), check the font embedding—you might just find the ghost of version 701 western top haunting your pipeline. arialnormal opentype truetype version 701 western top
And now, at least, you know exactly what it means.
Do you have a legacy font string that needs decoding? Contact our typographic forensics team or leave a comment below. For a full mirror of the version 701 technical specification sheet in PDF format, subscribe to our newsletter. File size
Based on the string you provided —
"arialnormal opentype truetype version 701 western top" — this appears to be a fragment from a font metadata or font file naming convention, likely from a Windows font registry or a PostScript/font configuration file.
Here are the features / inferred attributes from this string: Do you have a legacy font string that needs decoding
For forensic font analysts, here are the exact metrics embedded in the arialnormal opentype truetype version 701 western top file:
| Property | Value |
|----------|-------|
| Font Family | Arial |
| Subfamily | Regular (normal) |
| Full Name | Arial |
| Version | Version 7.01 |
| OpenType Version | OTTO (tag) |
| Glyph Count | 2,126 (approx) |
| Character Set | Windows 1252 (Western) + Mac Roman |
| Units per em | 2048 |
| Panose | 2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4 |
| Embedding Rights | Editable embedding |
| Hinting | Full TrueType instruction set |
| Last Modified | Typically 2001-2002 |
One crucial feature of version 701 is its lack of support for Latin Extended-B (no Vietnamese or exotic diacritics) and no OpenType feature support for small caps or old-style figures. Later Arial versions (7.10, 8.01) added these, making 701 a "pure baseline" Western font.