A computer-implemented method of generating a glyph in which a plurality of design characteristics are extracted from a target font and a source glyph program is generated using the design characteristics. The source glyph program defines a new glyph that corresponds to a character that is not present in the target font, e.g., the Euro, and is stylistically similar to glyph of the target font. The new glyph may be added to the target font, it may be rendered on an output device, or it may be saved separately from the target font.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/251,700, entitled GENERATING A GLYPH, filed Feb. 17, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,678,410 by Thomas W. Phinney and Jeremy A. Hall, assigned to the assignee of the present application, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
A method and apparatus for generating a display list, for use in rendering a plurality of glyphs, is disclosed. The method creates a display list for storing representations of the glyphs and stores at least a first one of the glyphs in the display list as a bitmap representation depending on one or more predetermined criteria. The at least first one of the glyphs may alternatively be stored in the display list as a vector representation.
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.
Stroke contrast is preserved for a range of font sizes and display resolutions using programmatic constraints or "hints". One implementation of a "font hinting" approach enforces a regularization of stroke weights such that stroke contrast is preserved for font sizes and display resolutions sufficient to render it. Font hinting instructions determine a stroke contrast threshold, which may be used to decide whether to preserve or omit stroke contrast when rendering the glyph. In one implementation, the stroke contrast threshold is based on one or more stroke contrast relationships associated with the typeface. In other implementations, the stroke contrast threshold is based on a minimum size threshold or lowercase/uppercase stroke contrast relationships.
