If you've poked around your fonts list in Windows 7, you might have come across a display font called Gabriola. What you may not have known is that this font is an important first step in some additions to Windows. Gabriola is an OpenType font that includes significant flourishes that push the boundries of vertical space, display logic, and Cleartype. The lessons learned from Gabriola, coupled with YDirection Antialiasing in Windows 7 Cleartype, will help Microsoft create a better reading experience with other fonts like Arabic.

Geraldine Wade from the Cleartype Advanced Reading Technologies team walked us through a look at what makes Gabriola different from other fonts in Windows, how it lights up in Blend, and to talk about what this means for font designers going forward.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/The-Importance-of-Gabriola/

article posted 9 September 2009 and last updated 9 September 2009.