What Is a Font?

This section describes fonts of typefaces. A font is an instance of a typeface for formatted characters (glyphs in XSL-FO term), with a specific size, weight, style and character set.

What Is a Font? A font is a specific instance of a typeface for formatted characters (glyphs in XSL-FO term). A font consists of following specifications:

For example, "12-point bold italic Arial" is a font of the "Arial" font family. The average size of its glyphs is 12 point (1/6 inch). Its glyph stokes are bolded, a little bit thicker than a normal font. Its glyphs are slightly skewed towards the right. Its glyphs cover all characters of most Western languages, but not Chinese characters.

Here is another example, "12-point bold italic SimHei" is a font of the "SimHei" font family. The average size of its glyphs is 12 point (1/6 inch). Its glyph stokes are bolded, a little bit thicker than a normal font. Its glyphs are slightly skewed towards the right. Its glyphs cover most Chinese characters used today, but not some special characters.

The picture below shows some example fonts in the Arial and SimHei families:

Font Examples in Arial and SimHei Families
Font Examples in Arial and SimHei Families

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of XSL-FO

 Apache™ FOP (Formatting Objects Processor)

 RenderX XEP as an XSL-FO Tool

 Introduction of Area Model

 XSL-FO Document Basics and Examples

 Page Layout Masters

 Block-Level Formatting Objects

 Inline-Level Formatting Objects

 Including Graphics in XSL-FO document

 Table of Rows and Columns

 List, Item, Label, and Body

 Floating Blocks - "float" and "footnote"

 Hyperlinks, Table of Contents and Indexes

 Headers and Footers using "static-content"

Font Attributes and Font Families

What Is a Font?

 Font Attributes and Generic Fonts

 Adobe PDF Base-14 Fonts

 Generic Font for Chinese Characters

 Apache FOP Font Configurations

 RenderX XEP Font Configurations

 Converting HTML to PDF

 References

 Full Version in PDF/ePUB