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Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
About the Font Manager
QuickDraw draws text to the screen and, sometimes, to a printer. For its purposes, the glyphs that make up text are simply little images that make up a large, albeit well-ordered, image. QuickDraw uses size information, such as height and width, as it might use that information when arranging any graphic image.The Font Manager, by contrast, keeps track of detailed font information such as the glyphs' character codes, whether fonts are fixed-width or proportional, and which fonts are related to each other by name.
When QuickDraw needs to draw some text in a particular font, it sends a request for that font to the Font Manager. The Font Manager finds the font or the closest match to it that is available, and sends the font back to QuickDraw with some information that QuickDraw uses for stylistic variations and layout.
- Note
- Although the terms glyph and character code have different meanings, QuickDraw routines and data structure fields often use the word character for both. Review the purpose of the routine or data structure you're using before deciding whether it handles character codes or glyphs.
Subtopics
- How QuickDraw Requests a Font
- How the Font Manager Responds to a Font Request
- How the Font Manager Scales Fonts
- How the Font Manager Calculates Glyph Widths
- Synthetic Fonts
- How the Font Manager Renders Outline Fonts