An introduction to typographic fonts and digital font resources

摘要

Type has evolved from blocks of wood or metal bearing the raised character shape to the many and varied digitized representations of the character that are available through computer system technology. Typography is the art or technique of composing printed material from type. The evolution of digital type into the computers of today has opened the door of typography to people who have had little or no previous knowledge of the subject. It has also introduced a higher level of complexity to document composition and presentation service software than was previously required. Discussed in this paper are the art of composing printed material, the selection of an appropriate type design for a given application, the information required to create and manage a digital font resource, and the computer system's use of digital font resources to produce typographic-quality documents. These matters are examined in a way that introduces the reader to typographic fonts, the additional complexities involved, and the need for consistency in the definition and application of digital font resources.