Chapter Six. Fonts

We have a love-hate relationship with fonts. We love their chiseled serifs, we swoon over their graceful swashes, we kern them to the verge of claustrophobia. We painstakingly track text to perfection, and agonize over minuscule leading values. Wait a minute. This is starting to sound like a romance novel. That would be the love part of the equation. Alas, this chapter is more about the hate part.

Font Flavors

Fonts come in several formats: PostScript (often also referred to as Type 1), TrueType, and OpenType. Within those major species, there are subspecies, but it’s sufficient to know the major species. We’ll ignore ancient Mac system fonts, which were just bitmap information.

PostScript (Type 1) Fonts

We were all raised to believe ...

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