|
|
5.2.1 Font matching
Because there is no accepted, universal taxonomy of font properties, matching
of properties to font faces must be done carefully. The properties are matched
in a well-defined order to insure that the results of this matching process
are as consistent as possible across UAs (assuming that the same library
of font faces is presented to each of them).
-
The User Agent makes (or accesses) a database of relevant CSS1 properties
of all the fonts of which the UA is aware. The UA may be aware of a font
because it has been installed locally or it has been previously downloaded
over the web. If there are two fonts with exactly the same properties, one
of them is ignored.
-
At a given element and for each character in that element, the UA assembles
the font-properties applicable to that element. Using the complete set of
properties, the UA uses the 'font-family' property to choose a tentative
font family. The remaining properties are tested against the family according
to the matching criteria described with each property. If there are matches
for all the remaining properties, then that is the matching font face for
the given element.
-
If there is no matching font face within the 'font-family' being processed
by step 2, and if there is a next alternative 'font-family' in the font set,
then repeat step 2 with the next alternative 'font-family'.
-
If there is a matching font face, but it doesn't contain a glyph for the
current character, and if there is a next alternative 'font-family' in the
font sets, then repeat step 2 with the next alternative 'font-family'. See
appendix C for a description of font and character
encoding.
-
If there is no font within the family selected in 2, then use a UA-dependent
default 'font-family' and repeat step 2, using the best match that can be
obtained within the default font.
(The above algorithm can be optimized to avoid having to revisit the CSS1
properties for each character.)
The per-property matching rules from (2) above are as follows:
-
'font-style' is tried first. 'italic' will be satisfied
if there is either a face in the UA's font database labeled with the CSS
keyword 'italic' (preferred) or 'oblique'. Otherwise the values must be matched
exactly or font-style will fail.
-
'font-variant' is tried next. 'normal' matches
a font not labeled as 'small-caps'; 'small-caps' matches (1) a font labeled
as 'small-caps', (2) a font in which the small caps are synthesized, or (3)
a font where all lowercase letters are replaced by upper case letters. A
small-caps font may be synthesized by electronically scaling uppercase letters
from a normal font.
-
'font-weight' is matched next, it will never fail.
(See 'font-weight' below.)
-
'font-size' must be matched within a UA-dependent
margin of tolerance. (Typically, sizes for scalable fonts are rounded to
the nearest whole pixel, while the tolerance for bitmapped fonts could be
as large as 20%.) Further computations, e.g. by 'em' values in other properties,
are based on the 'font-size' value that is used, not the one that is specified.
Dark blue text is taken from Cascading Style Sheets, level 1. W3C Recommendation 17 December 1996 - http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-CSS1
this text [ext link] signifies an external link, please read our disclaimer.
this page was last updated 30 June 1997
© 1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of use.
comments to the MST group:
how to contact us
|
|
