Reformatting a previously formatted portion of document text using a "live preview" technique. A sample of formats from a format set may be determined. A previously formatted portion of text within the document may be identified, for example, by identifying the portion of text positioned immediately adjacent to a cursor or by identifying a highlighted portion of text. For each format included in the sample of formats, the portion of text may be reformatted and displayed in a live preview window. The live preview window may be a floating window that hovers above the document. A custom format, such as a user-defined format may be added to the sample of formats. In response to adding the custom format to the sample of formats, the portion of text may be reformatted with the custom format and displayed along with the rest of the live preview text in the live preview window. Accordingly, the user may view and compare the portion of text formatted in a variety of formats from the format set and/or custom formats, prior to actually reformatting the portion of text in the document.

Reformatting a previously formatted document. A unique interface allows preview and selection of both a color set and a font set. A color set comprises a plurality of colors defining a color scheme. The font set comprises a plurality of fonts defining a font theme. A format set is defined by the selection of a color set and a font set. A format set comprises a plurality of formats, each format comprising a format font name, a format font size, a format font color, and other properties. Once a format set is determined, the document is reformatted in such a way as to largely maintain the proportionality and integrity of its previous formatting. In so doing, each discrete portion of text in the document is analyzed to determine its format properties. Each format in the format set is then compared to the text format. Points are added to a match quality value associated with the format when it is determined that a property of the format matches a property of the existing text format. The match quality values for each format in the format set are compared and the format having the greatest associated match quality value is applied to the discrete portion of text.

Methods and systems permit rendering a text element formatted using unavailable or restricted fonts. In one embodiment, when producing a document that contains a restricted font, text portions formatted with the restricted font are processed into an alternate representation. A textual representation for the text portions and the additional representation(s) are embedded in a document or container. A unique representation for the restricted font file allows a consuming computing system to attempt to find the restricted font locally. Each textual representation is rendered using its corresponding restricted font, if the restricted font file is found. Otherwise, the additional representation(s) are used.

Methods for rendering font objects include: receiving input identifying an object to be rendered; selecting a data set for rendering the object from: (a) a first data set including font object data in a first format (e.g., trajectory data), and (b) a second data set including font object data in a second format (e.g., outline data); and rendering the object using the selected data set. The data set may be selected based on at least one run time parameter, such as the ppem or space available for the rendering, the desired text size, system resolution, font object complexity, contextual information, etc., to provide a high quality rendered image. Additional data sets (e.g., augmenting data, enhancing data, etc.) may be included to provide more rendering options to further increase the quality of the rendered image under some conditions. The various data sets may be independently created so that each data set can be produced specifically targeted to selected rendering conditions (such as a selected ppem range).

Method and system aspects are described for ensuring accurate font matching in exchanged documents. The aspects include forming a database of font specifications. The aspects further include accessing the database when saving and opening documents to ensure usage of proper fonts.