Windows 95 Fonts Overview

Fonts are used to print text, display text on screen, and send text to other output devices. Windows 95 provides a set of Win32-based functions that developers can use to install, select, and query different fonts.

Windows 95 provides three basic kinds of fonts, which are categorized according to how the fonts are rendered for screen or print output:

• TrueType fonts are stored as mathematical models that define the outline of each character. They are much easier to work with than vector fonts because they appear the same on the screen as they do on the printed page. TrueType fonts can be scaled and rotated.
• Raster fonts are stored in files as bitmaps and are rendered as an array of dots for displaying on the screen and printing on paper. Raster fonts cannot be cleanly scaled or rotated.
• Vector fonts are rendered from a mathematical model, in which each character is defined as a set of lines drawn between points. Vector fonts can be scaled to any size or aspect ratio, but are much more limited than TrueType fonts. Windows 95 provides one vector font (MODERN.FON) to ensure backward compatibility with plotter devices. It is installed in the Windows SYSTEM\COLOR subdirectory.

Raster and vector font files have .FON filename extensions. TrueType font files have .TTF filename extensions.

Note

In Windows 95, information in the Registry points to a single .TTF file for TrueType fonts as described in "Loading Fonts in Windows 95" later in this chapter. In addition, Windows 95 includes a hidden file named TTFCACHE that contains FOT type data for TrueType fonts to ensure backward compatibility with Windows 3.1. For TrueType fonts in Windows 3.1, there are two files for each font: the .FOT file contains a relatively short header with pointer information, and the .TTF file contains the actual font data.