Font : Java Glossary

Java Font Support

AWT (Advanced Windowing Toolkit) will only support the five basic logical fonts, unless you paint on a Canvas, however oddly under Fedora and AWT you can use up to 82 of your installed fonts. If you try to use more, you get an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. The above information may be incorrect or may become incorrect at any time. Feel free to try any fonts with Java on any platform. The worst that could happen is they won’t work.

Java’s Font Class

If you accidentally reverse the second and third constructor parameters, your code will compile, but the font display will be microscopic or invisible.

Font Design Is An Art

What Fonts Are Available Windows

To see what fonts are available to Windows, click Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Appearance and Personalization ⇒ Fonts . These fonts will work in Windows word processors and many Windows programs including browsers. Not all of the fonts will work in Java, or Java Applets however. To find out the name of the corresponding file in C:\Windows, right click Properties.

Installing a Font In Windows

1. Click Start
2. Control Panel
3. Appearance and Personalisation
4. Install or Remove a Font
5. Click File. If you don’t see File, click Alt.
6. Install New Font
7. In the Add Fonts dialog box, under Drives, click the drive where the font that you want to install is located
8. Under Folders, double-click the folder containing the fonts that you want to add
9. Under List of fonts, click the font that you want to add
10. click Install

Installing a Font In Linux

What Fonts Are Available On My Machine under Java?

• In Windows, Java ignores your vector, bitmap and PostScript fonts. It can only use the TrueType and OpenType fonts. Further it will only use TrueType and OpenType fonts with Unicode encodings. Older fonts or fonts with only a few specialty characters will often not work because they come only with 8-bit encodings. You might pester the font authors to add the Unicode support. Modern fonts often come with several encodings. Java just uses the Unicode encoding.
• In AWT, you are limited to the five Java logical fonts, unless you use Canvas. drawString.
• Use the FontShower Amanuensis to show you what fonts are available, and what they look like in various styles, sizes and colours, in both Swing and AWT.
• Browser Fonts available in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
• Check in Control Panel ⇒ fonts to see what fonts your Operating System has installed and what the fonts are called. This list is not necessarily identical to the list Java supports. In Vista/W7-32/W7-64 Click Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Appearance and Personalisation ⇒ Fonts to see what fonts are installed. The fonts themselves live in C:\windows\fonts.
• InJava version 1.4 or later and perhaps earlier you also have: Lucida Bright, Lucida Sans and Lucida Sans Typewriter.
• The Java logical fonts work best for rendering the more exotic characters. In addition these native fonts are fairly good: MS PGothic and MSUIgothic.
• Font
• If
• Defining

  // defining a Font with two style attributes
  Font f = new Font( "SansSerif", Font.BOLD + Font.ITALIC, 12 );

• As a programmer you can find out what fonts are available.Java version 1.2 or later you can discover
• InJava version 1.6 or later, (Obsolete) use 

  // now deprecated
  String[] files = java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getFontList();

  to discover the available fonts. They will include Serif (formerly known as TimesRoman), SansSerif (formerly known as Helvetica) or Monospaced (formerly known as Courier). InJava version 1.2 or later, the native fonts installed in the OS (Operating System) are also supported. The font names you feed to setFont must exactly match ones on that list. The ZapfDingbats font is deprecated in 1.1.

Adding Fonts toJava version 1.3 or later

Font f = Font.createFont( Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, inputStream );

This does not permanently install the font. There is no platform-independent way to do that. In W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W7-32/W7-64, you can copy the TrueType font to C:\WINNT\FONTS.

You would have to read your font licence agreement carefully to see if it permits you to use the font in this way.

If you wish to use PostScript Type 1 multiple master fonts with W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W7-32/W7-64, you need to install ATM (Adobe Type Manager) 4.1 or later. Do not install ATM 4.0 or earlier on W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W7-32/W7-64. W2K/XP/W2003/Vista/W7-32/W7-64 have built-in support for ordinary PostScript Type 1 fonts, and OpenType, though Java ignores the PostScript fonts.

Adding Fonts toJava version 1.2 (obsolete)

1. Install the font on your host by following the host’s directions for installing fonts. On Windows, for example, you do this via control panel ⇒ Fonts. The font will be available both to your native Windows apps and your Java apps. Most TrueType fonts have a Unicode cmap index. You’ll notice that only a few do not. For example, if you look in your font.properties files, only Wingdings and Symbol fonts have the NEED_CONVERTED tag on them, which indicates that they require a conversion from a Unicode codepoint to a different indexing scheme within the font. If they have a native cmap index, Java is able to use them without special entries in the font.properties file.
2. Copy the font into your jre/lib/fonts subdirectory. The font will be available only to Java. Notice that there are a set of Lucida fonts in there already: Lucida Bright, Lucida Sans and Lucida Sans Typewriter.
3. Install the font using the font.properties file as you would in Java version 1.6 or later. You would need to use this technique if you needed to stitch several 8-bit fonts together to form one big Java logical Unicode font.

Units of Measure, Points and Pixels

But the real problem is historical. Two fonts families, both 12 points can be drastically different sizes. The size includes a variable about of vertical white space the designer thinks looks good with his font. You can see this effect clearly when you examine fonts with FontShower. Different fonts all rendered at the same point size are drastically different in size. This creates a WORA nightmare for Java programmers. If a font is not available on the client’s computer, or if the font has the same name, but a different provider, the rendered text may be way too big or too small to fit in the space allotted. You run into this problem even with the Sun standard logical default fonts like Dialog. Phhht! To deal with this, I resorted to the ugly kludge of making my Applets 12% bigger than optimal on my Vista machine to give them some slop to run with larger versions of the 16 point Dialog font on other platforms. Of course, this makes the Applets look silly on Vista machines.

Excusing themselves with artistic licence, font designers make their type sometimes up to twice as tall as requested or as small as half as tall. It makes some sense for fonts that also render Chinese to increase the size to ensure any Chinese rendered will still be legible. You might use the true font height numbers from the FontShower all fonts option to adjust the font sizes selected in css or Java to fully or partially compensate.

Font Naming

1. The retail name used to sell the font, e.g. Century Schoolbook.
2. The family name, usually abbreviated, e.g. CentSchbook BT. This is typically what you use in Java or in your CSS style sheet. You must get the spelling exactly right including spaces.
3. The precise font name, including adoments (suffixes to describe weight, style, stretch etc.), e.g. CentSchbook BT Roman, CentSchbook BT Italic, CentSchbook BT Bold, CentSchbook BT Bold Italic, CentSchbook BdCn BT Bold (bold condensed) or CentSchbook Mono BT (monospaced).

Acquiring Fonts

Unfortunately, when you buy a font that usually gives you the right to use it on only your computer, but not to let people download it to view your webpages, or to include it in your programs. Usually you would not even be permitted to include them in PDF (Portable Document Format) documents. BitStream discontinued its scheme of downloadable fonts called webfonts that let you include the font in your web pages. CSS provides a scheme to include your fonts in your web pages, but they have to be free fonts or fonts you have licenced to distribute.

• Ask Google to help you find free fonts.
• Nicksfonts.com has a collection of freeware fonts.
•  myfonts.com lets you test drive fonts before you buy by typing in sample text to see how it will look. This also lets you check if iI!|l o0O8¤[]() qg Ww `'“‘’” ()[]{} ;,. look too much alike. It also lets you check for kerning errors in the font design e.g. do WA nestle properly. Just seeing letters in isolation does not give you a sense of what the font looks like in use. The generated font sample at MyFonts.com does not display in the box in the upper right where you would expect. Look about half way down the page.

  	Search	Search by font name or keyword.
  	Font Categories	View fonts by category
  	Alphabetical	View fonts alphabetically.
  	Languages	View fonts for languages other than English.
  	Best Sellers	Look at what other people are buying.
  	Font CDs	Font collections on CD (Compact Disk), a low cost way to build a font library.

• Font Search

  

• I bought the Bitstream 500-font CD collection which contains the following fonts
  Unfortunately it is no longer sold. However there is a 200-font Cambridge collection for $199.00 USD . There is also a 1450-font Odyssey CD for  $1495.00 USD . It comes in Windows/Mac TTF/PostScript variants. It is licenced for 20 users or workstations. Here are some of view Unfortunately you can’t use these fonts on your website, other than by creating *.png files. You can’t give them to your viewers to download to view your site.
• The fonts in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\PDFL\8.0\Fonts are PostScript-style otf fonts which Windows cannot handle. Only Adobe Acrobat can use them. Confusingly, both ps-style and ttf-style OpenType fonts use the same otf extension.

Personal Picks

Font Licensing

As I understand it, you typically can do the following things without needing an extra multi-user licence above and beyond buying the font:

• Use the font on your own computer
• Use the font on your own LAN (Local Area Network) for 1 to 20 computers at one site.
• Distribute a hard copy document using that font.
• Distribute a *.gif or Button containing some text in that font.
• Use the fonts in portable documents. You may send a TrueDoc *.pfr PFR (Portable Font Resource) with the understanding the *.pfr cannot be used for any other document.
• Embed fonts within PostScript *.ps and *.eps files, Acrobat *.pdf files, and *.evy files for distribution, viewing, and imaging to other parties, with the understanding others may not extract the fonts to be used with any other document.

As I understand it, you need an extra multi-user license to do the following things:

• Distribute an electronic document using the font, e.g. Word *.doc, Acrobat *.pdf, *.html etc. with the font packaged separately.
• Attach or embed the font in an email.
• Use the font on your website.
• Send a document using that font to a typesetter who does not own his own copy of the font. This is an extra restriction on the general rule.
• Using a font in an Applet on your website.
• Embedding the font in a program you distribute.

Readable Fonts

To control the font and size of any individual item such as tooltip, click Start ⇒ Settings ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Display ⇒ Appearance ⇒ Item. You can then select Active Title Bar, Inactive Title Bar, Palette Title, Message Box, Menu, Selected Item or Icon and set the font and size.

Neither of these techniques will change the font sizes used by applications. For that you need to look to custom ways in each application to customise the fonts and sizes.

Java fonts look terrible because by default they do no antialiasing and ignore the hints. You can improve them with anti-aliasing.

Most fonts don’t support many of the national currency symbols. Tahoma is better than most.

Rendering

1. AWT : limited to the 5 Java logical fonts. Anti-aliasing is controlled by the OS. Easy to program. Rendering is handled by the OS which renders the heavyweight peers associated with each Component. For an example of such rendering see FontShowerAWT.
2. AWT Canvas: can use all the OS fonts. Can choose programmatically whether you want Anti-aliasing. This is difficult to program since you do all your rendering at the low-level drawString level. For an example of such rendering see com.mindprod.fontshowerawt. AntiAliastedFontedTextArea or FontedTextArea.
3. Swing: can use all the OS fonts. Easy to program. Rendering the fonts is managed by the Swing runtime on lightweight JComponents. Anti-aliasing is controlled by the OS. For an example of such rendering see FontShower for Swing.

On my Vista machine, configured in the Control Panel to use ClearType anti-aliasing to smooth font edges, under both AWT and Swing I see fonts fully anti-aliased. The only time I see degraded fonts are when I view fonts rendered on an AWT Canvas without anti-alias. Ditto for XP. With an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitor, you want ClearType subpixel anti-aliasing. To turn it on click Start ⇒ Control Panel ⇒ Appearance and Personalization ⇒ Personalization ⇒ Windows color and appearance ⇒ Open classic colour and appearance ⇒ Effects ⇒ ClearType.

Hinting

ClearType

Here is how to activate ClearType font in Windows XP:

1. Click Start
2. Control Panel
3. Appearance and Themes
4. Display
5. Appearance
6. Effects
7. Click Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts.
8. Select ClearType in the list.

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. System and Maintenance
4. Performance Information and Tools
5. Adjust Visual Effects (on left)
6. smooth edges of screen fonts

You can fine tune the clear type by downloading this powertuner from Microsoft.

Corrupt Fonts

// OOPS, DON'T DO THIS!
component.setFont( new Font( "Dialog", 12, Font.BOLD ));

// do this instead:
component.setFont( new Font( "Dialog", Font.BOLD, 12 ));

del C:\WINNT\System32\fntcache.dat

Bundling Fonts In a Jar

Conserving Fonts

Font f = new Font( "Monospaced", Font.PLAIN, 12 )

Having too many fonts installed, (not the same thing as having too many duplicate Font objects), has several drawbacks:

• They consume large amounts of RAM.
• They clutter your menus.
• They cause Windows to crash more frequently.

Will this character Display?

boolean Font.canDisplay( char );

It is up to you to find a font that can display the character you need. Unfortunately, fonts often lie about what glyphs they can display. For example, if you ask them if they can display a euro, they say yes, then display a blob, which in their distorted view of things counts as displaying the character. Technically, canDisplay is supposed to return true for any code point in the range handled by the font, which is not very useful information.

Happily, if you specify a font not installed on the target machine, Java simply reverts to the default font. There is no mechanism similar to CSS or HTML where you can specify a list of fonts in preference order. You have to code that yourself and feed setFont a specific Font.

Changing the Default Fonts

Font defaultFont = new Font( "Dialog", Font.PLAIN, 12 );
UIManager.put( "Button.font", new FontUIResource ( defaultFont ) );

The approach is to write your own Look & Feel that extends some other one, and just overrides a few font-defining methods or colour-defining methods. See this sample code for a writing a derived LAF.

if you want to attempt multi-lingual fonts. Prior toJava version 1.4, I only managed to get Unicode fonts to display properly with NT and Win2K and Internet Explorer. Windows 98 displays accented letters above 255 without the accents.

Font Gotchas

• The gotcha most likely to bite you in that, in AWT, you are limited to the Java logical fonts: Dialog, DialogInput, Monospaced, Serif and SansSerif unless you take special measures, described later. Peered AWT components, such as Label and TextField, can only use Java logical fonts. This means with AWT, you are pretty will stuck with the basic set. You can get the others with drawString and a Canvas. If you try to use some other font, AWT will just quietly substitute one of the Java logical fonts at the last second.
• If you use drawString in a paint method, you specify the baseline left corner of where you want the text to go, not the top left as for most other painting. In most other Font uses, the component deals with such details for you automatically.
• If you include an exotic character like '\u060b', the Afghani currency sign, drawString, or Component that uses it, will render your string from right to left, displaying the characters in reverse order.
• Peered AWT components, such as Label and TextField cannot display the full font complement. For example, using the Dialog Java logical font, peered components can display 6 of 27 international currency symbols. Using Canvas, you can display 18 of 27. The reason is Swing Components and Canvas/drawString have access to Graphics2D where AWT peer Components are limited by whatever the host GUI (Graphic User Interface) OS provides via the peer rendering.
• newLabel.getFont() will just give you null. A Component does not acquire a default Font until it has a parent.
• \u0e3f in a JTextArea inhibits antialiasing, ditto \ufdfc. \u0e3f is a Thai Baht currency sign like a capital B with a line through it. \ufdfc is the Yemeni Rial currency sign. It looks like Arabic script. Using one of these characters turns off anti-aliasing for the entire JTextArea. They seem to have no such effect in AWT with drawString or with TextArea. This strange behaviour has been observed both in Win2K and Linux. See antialiasing for details.
• Microscopic fonts, too tiny to see, have two common causes.

Books

	recommend book⇒Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)
	by:	Ellen Lupton	978-1-56898-448-3	paperback
		(born: 1963 age: 48)
	publisher:	Princeton Architectural Press
	published:	2004-09-09
This is not a font catalog book. It is a book about how to select the right font for the job, and about how to design type generally.
abe books anz abe books.co.uk abe books.de amazon.co.uk amazon.de abe books.ca iberlibro.com amazon.ca amazon.es Chapters Indigo abe books.fr abe books.com amazon.fr amazon.com abe books.it Barnes & Noble amazon.it powells.com o’reilly safari sony e-books
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

	recommend book⇒Big Book of 5000 Fonts: (And Where to Get Them)
	by:	David Carter	978-0-8230-0489-8	hardcover
	publisher:	Watson-Guptill Publications
	published:	2002-02
also includes websites with free downloadable fonts. Note the publish date. Font books in general tend to be out of date.
abe books anz abe books.co.uk abe books.de amazon.co.uk amazon.de abe books.ca iberlibro.com amazon.ca amazon.es Chapters Indigo abe books.fr abe books.com amazon.fr amazon.com abe books.it Barnes & Noble amazon.it powells.com o’reilly safari sony e-books
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

	recommend book⇒Logo Font & Lettering Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Design, Construction and Usage of Alphabets and Symbols
	by:	Leslie Cabarga	978-1-58180-436-2	hardcover
		(born: 1954 age: 57)
	publisher:	How Design Books
	published:	2004-03
This is about how to design your own custom fonts and logos.
abe books anz abe books.co.uk abe books.de amazon.co.uk amazon.de abe books.ca iberlibro.com amazon.ca amazon.es Chapters Indigo abe books.fr abe books.com amazon.fr amazon.com abe books.it Barnes & Noble amazon.it powells.com o’reilly safari sony e-books
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

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