Font Basics

Font Basics

Fonts are collections of characters. A font contains the information about the shape, size, and position of each character in a character set. That information is needed by programs that process characters, such as editing, word-processing, desktop publishing, multimedia, titling, and prepress application programs. Almost all software components in a computer system use fonts to display messages, prompts, titles, and so forth.

Binary digits are used to represent all types of information stored in a digital computer, including fonts. Digital typography deals with the style, arrangement, and appearance of typeset matter in digital systems. If you want to use font and font metric files to correctly typeset text on a digital computer, you need to know some basics about digital typography. This section contains a brief introduction to fonts and digital typography. You may want to read a book on typography for more in-depth information.

This section covers the following topics:

"Terminology" introduces a few basic terms.
"How Resolution Affects Font Size" describes horizontal and vertical resolution, pixels, and bitmap fonts.
"Font Names" explains the differences between PostScript and X Windows font names.
"Writing Programs That Need to Use Fonts" covers X programs, Display Postscript® (DPS) programs, and IRIS GL(TM) and IRIS GL/X programs.

Terminology
How Resolution Affects Font Size
Font Names
Writing Programs That Need to Use Fonts