Introduction to Fonts

A font is a collection of characters of a particular height (measured in points, twips or in some other device-independent unit). A typeface is a group of related fonts of various sizes which share the same typeface name and typeface attributes. Typefaces are stored in a typeface store.

The font classes deal with fonts in an abstract device-independent way, so as to allow such facilities as WYSIWYG across different devices. Abstract fonts are mapped onto device-dependent fonts by various other components — for example, the font and bitmap server, and printing services.