Legacy Document
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Kinds of Fonts
Each glyph has some characteristics that distinguish it from other glyphs that represent the same character: for example, the shape of the oval, the design of the stem, or whether or not the glyph has a serif. If all the glyphs for a particular character set share certain characteristics, they form a typeface, which is a distinctly designed collection of glyphs. Each typeface has its own name, such as New York, Geneva, or Symbol. The same typeface can be used with different hardware, such as typesetting machines, monitors, or laser printers.A style is a specific variation in the appearance of a glyph that can be applied consistently to all the glyphs in a typeface. Styles available on the Macintosh computer include plain, bold, italic, underline, outline, shadow, condensed, and extended. QuickDraw can add styles such as bold or italic to bitmaps, or a font designer can design a font in a specific style (for instance, Courier Bold).
A font refers to a complete set of glyphs in a specific typeface and style--and, in the case of bitmapped fonts, a specific size. Bitmapped fonts are fonts of the bitmapped font (
'NFNT') resource type or'FONT'resource type that provide an individual bitmap for each glyph in each size and style. Courier plain 10-point, Courier bold 10-point, and Courier plain 12-point, for example, are considered three different fonts. If the user requests a font that is not available in a particular size, QuickDraw can alter a bitmapped font at a different size to create the required glyphs. However, this generated bitmap often appears to be irregular in some way.Outline fonts are fonts of the outline font (
'sfnt') resource type that consist of glyphs in a particular typeface and style with no size restriction. TrueType outline fonts are outline fonts that use the Apple TrueType format. The Font Manager can generate thousands of point sizes from the same TrueType outline font: a single outline Courier font can produce Courier 10-point, Courier 12-point, and Courier 200-point.