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Inside Macintosh: Text /

Chapter 4 - Font Manager / About Font Resources

Font Resource Types

Although the display of different fonts has always been an important aspect of using the Macintosh computer, the need for increased font availability and flexibility has expanded significantly since the introduction of the Macintosh. The built-in font management software has increased in power and complexity to accommodate the expanded needs of users. There used to be only one font resource type, of type 'FONT', but it is now out of date. There are now three additional font resource types.

• Bitmapped font ('NFNT') resources describe bitmapped fonts. These bitmapped font resources have an identical structure to the earlier 'FONT' resources, which they have replaced, but the bitmapped font resources add a more flexible font ID number scheme. This chapter assumes that you are working with bitmapped font resources rather than 'FONT' resources. The fields of the bitmapped font resource are described in the section "The Bitmapped Font ('NFNT') Resource," which begins on page 4-62.
• Outline font ('sfnt') resources describe outline fonts. The fields and tables of the outline font resource are described in the section "The Outline Font ('sfnt') Resource," which begins on page 4-68.
• Font family ('FOND') resources describe font families, including information such as which fonts are included in the family and the recommended width for a glyph at a given point size. The fields and tables of the font family resource are described in the section "The Font Family ('FOND') Resource," which begins on page 4-86.

Each font that you use is represented by either a bitmapped font or outline font resource (or a 'FONT' resource, in some cases), and each is part of a font family. A single font family can contain a mixture of bitmapped and outline fonts. The font association table in the font family resource refers to the font resources that the family includes.

Handles to font resources, found in data structures such as the global width table and the FMOutput record, can point to either kind of font.