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Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Identifying Fonts
When multiple fonts of the same typeface are present in system software, the Font Manager groups them into font families of the font family ('FOND') resource type. Each font in a font family can be bitmapped or outline. Bitmapped fonts in the same family can be different styles or sizes. For example, an outline plain font for Geneva and two bitmapped fonts for Geneva plain 12-point and Geneva italic 12-point might make
up one font family named Geneva, to which a user could subsequently add other sizes
or styles.A font has a font name, which is stored as a string such as "Geneva" or "New York". The font name is usually the same name as the typeface from which it was derived. If a font is not in plain style, its style becomes part of the font's name and distinguishes it from the plain style of that font: for example, "Palatino" and "Palatino Bold".
A font family ID is the resource ID for a font family. Because there are so many font families available for the Macintosh, many families have the same font ID. Therefore, to avoid confusion, when your application stores font references in a document, it should refer to fonts by name and not by number.