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Looking
at font properties
Looking at font
properties helps you select a suitable font for your application. Fonts
have visual and technical properties as follows:
Serif. A part
of a character which crosses the end of a major stroke.
Sans
Serif. Without
serifs.
X-Height. Height of
the lowercase letter x, above the baseline.
Ascender
Height.
Height of the lowercase ascenders, above the baseline.
Cap
Height. Height
of the capital letters, above the baseline.
Descender
Depth.
Depth of the lowercase descenders, below the baseline.
Microsoft
Core Fonts for the Web
For further details
on Microsoft's Core Fonts for the Web, refer to the
following web site:
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Font
classifications describe visual and technical properties
Rubicon classifies fonts
into categories
according to their visual and technical properties as follows:
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Realist
Fonts. Sans serif fonts
with little variation in stroke width, and
uppercase letters of nearly equal width. Also known as Neo-Grotesque.
They
have a neutral look.
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Humanist
Fonts. Sans serif fonts with contrasting stroke widths, and
uppercase
letters of variable widths, based on the letters inscribed on Trajan's
Column. They have a calligraphic look. |
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Geometric
Fonts. Sans serif fonts whose letters are based upon geometric
shapes.
They have a modern look. |
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Book
Fonts. Serif fonts designed for printing books and long passages of
text, on good quality paper. They have a classical look. Book fonts
have
a low x-height and long ascenders and descenders. They are designed to
be printed at sizes of about 12 points, with normal line spacing. |
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Newspaper
Fonts. Serif fonts designed for printing columns of text in
newspapers,
under poor print conditions. They have a common look. Newspaper fonts
have
a tall x-height and short ascenders and descenders. They are designed
to
be printed at sizes of about 8.5 points, with tight line spacing. |
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Packaging
Fonts. Variants of other fonts, with an increased x-height. Can be
serif or sans serif. Legible in smaller sizes, especially in product
packaging.
They have a commercial look. |
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Condensed Fonts. Fonts with
relatively narrow
characters. The characters retain the same heights and stroke weights
as
regular width characters. Condensed type is used to fit more text into
a restricted area without losing legibility. The main application is
for
tabular composition including tables, forms, lists, and directories.
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Computer typography
begins with Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web
Today's standard
computer typefaces originated with Microsoft's
Core fonts for the Web in 1996. The typefaces that include four
variants - regular, italic, bold, and bold
italic - are as
follows:
- Times
and
Arial. Designed to be printed.
- Georgia,
Verdana,
and Trebuchet. Designed for on-screen display.
These
are excellent typefaces to start with, but eventually you're going to
want more typefaces that express different moods and provide specific
typographic features.
Typography
requires more than Times and Arial
Times and
Arial are designed for
printing. They are popular typefaces, of good design,
but they lack certain
functionalities.
Times was designed in 1931 as a serif newspaper face
but
no one uses it for newspapers today. It's good
typeface for
books and
similar text work
but not ideal. As a
book face it is narrower and
plainer than other popular alternatives.
Arial was designed in 1990 as an alternative to Helvetica, a general
purpose sans serif typeface. It's drawbacks are that it doesn't print
as well as
Helvetica, and it isn't available in as many weights and widths as
Helvetica.
Printing requires
different fonts from
browsing
Georgia, Verdana,
and Trebuchet are designed for on-screen
display. Their legibility on-screen is
outstanding, but they don't print as well as Times and Arial. This is
generally true of fonts that are optimized for on-screen viewing. The
same properties that make them more legible on-screen, like increased
x-height and simplified character shapes, make them less legible in
print.
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