Font is a key factor of Desktop publishing. Different with the fond used in system display or web browsing, it requires more fonts to show the content, to reflect the design or enhance the visual effect in DTP. In Desktop publishing, it is necessary to know below several things about font:

1 Font Code

Different characters use difference code. For Text with special code, it requires the corresponding encoding font to correctly show them. For example, text in GB code can only normally show by font in GB code, it will be unrecognizable if other encoding font is applied. If Unicode is applied, it can put all kinds of encoding font into a same font file.

2 Font format

Font format refers to the data format of font, below is the common used font format:

PostScript

PostScript records the shape of characters in the mode of outline, which use four control points to describe a curve and utilize Bezier curve to make mathematical calculation. In this way, the outline shape of font is created.

There are several kinds of PostScript font:

Type 1: one of the most popular font format, most of English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.etc apply this format.

Type 3: one of the early Adobe font format.

Type 4: Japanese font format Adobe used.

CID: CID is the abbreviation of Character ID, its font format is designed for double byte characters, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.etc, its structure is simpler than Type 1 and directly matchs the data of font outline by CMap document, so it can improve the print speed and save Memory.

TrueType

TrueType font format is developed by Apple and Microsoft, which is used in the operation system of Macintosh and Windows. TrueType is same as PostScript, which use Bezier curve to descript the outline characters. The font can be zoomed in or zoomed out by any size or made other property changes.

OpenType

In the font outline of OpenType, it can handle all kinds of character, such as fancy ligatures and decorative variant in western characters. Also, OpenType allows showing different glyphs for the same character, which means to allow multiple writing for the character. In addition, as OpenType applies Unicode, which includes different character encoding in the same set of font, so it can better support multi-language texts?

3 Font type

No matter it is Western or Chinese, it can be divided into two categories: Serif type and Sans-serif type. Serif type means there are obvious decorative serif in the ending of strokes and the thickness is different for the strokes of different direction. Sans-serif type refers to the font without additional serif and with same thickness of strokes.

4 Font family

In the Western, there are usually a set of variation for the same font in the aspect of strokes and font width. Such series of font is called Font Family. For Chinese, as there are huge characters, it is difficult to make many font family same as Western. However, for the basic black font and Song font, there are relevant series of font.

5 Composite font

It refers to the compound font which consists of a kind of specific Chinese characters, punctuation, symbols, and specific English font, font synthesis of numbers. It can try to keep the design style of the source file with this kind of font.