FreeType Glyph Conventions

version 2.1

Copyright 1998-2000 David Turner (david@freetype.org)
Copyright 2000 The FreeType Development Team (devel@freetype.org)

Introduction

This document presents the core conventions used within the FreeType library to manage font and glyph data. It is a must-read for any people that needs to understand digital typography, especially if you want to use the FreeType 2 library in your projects.

I. Basic Typographic Concepts:

1. Font files, format and information
2. Character images and mappings
3. Character and font metrics

II. Glyph Outlines:

1. Pixels, Points and Device Resolutions
2. Vectorial representation
3. Hinting and bitmap rendering

III. Glyph Metrics:

1. Baseline, Pens and Layouts
2. Typographic metrics
3. Bearings and Advances
4. The effects of grid-fitting
5. Text widths and bounding box

IV. Kerning:

1. Kerning pairs
2. Applying kerning

V. Text Processing:

1. Writing simple text strings
2. Sub-pixel positioning
3. Simple kerning
4. Right-to-left layouts
5. Vertical layouts
6. WYSIWYG text layouts

VI. FreeType Outlins:

1. FreeType outline description and structure
2. Bounding and control box computations
3. Coordinates, scaling and grid-fitting

VII. FreeType Bitmaps:

1. Vectorial versus pixel coordinates
2. FreeType bitmap descriptor
3. Converting outlines into bitmaps

FreeType Glyph Conventions

version 2.1

Copyright 1998-2000 David Turner (david@freetype.org) Copyright 2000 The FreeType Development Team (devel@freetype.org)

Introduction

Table of Contents

I. Basic Typographic Concepts:

1. Font files, format and information 2. Character images and mappings 3. Character and font metrics