Understanding Windows Vista: Fonts Raster and Outline Fonts?

Windows display and the user documents can be improved by using the number of fonts, which is provided by windows. Extra fonts can also be added by installing software that will include fonts such as Microsoft Office or Corel WordPerfect Office or the fonts can be installed directly in the system. A font is nothing but a name given to the typeface, and a typeface is a collection of characters. Usually, all the characters present in the typeface will have alike characteristics.

Two categories of fonts are supported by Windows, and they are:

1. Raster fonts
2. Outline fonts

Raster fonts:

Windows has included an older technology, which is known as Raster Fonts. Raster Fonts has been included for Backward Compatibility in the system. Each character in the raster fonts contains a bitmap image that is displayed by printing on paper or is displayed on screen. There are seven types of raster fonts that windows include, and they are:

• Modem fonts
• Courier fonts
• MA Serif
• MS Sans Serif
• Script fonts
• Small fonts
• Roman fonts

Raster fonts will use the .fon extension like the vector font. The TrueType fonts are prearranged into TrueType collection and it will use the .ttc extension.

Outline Fonts:

The latest type of font created is the Outline Font. Using the curve and line command, windows will render the outline fonts. We can rotate and scale these fonts to any size without destroying them. There are three types of outline fonts that windows will provide, and they are:

Open type font, which are the recent extension of the TrueType font.

Type 1 font; which are used with devices and PostScript, which are created by Adobe systems.

TrueType fonts, which are used by windows from a lot of years.

We have to consider the following steps to display the font window in the system, and they are:

• The start control panel has to be selected; the control panel will be displayed by windows.
• The Appearance and Personalization window will be displayed windows, when the user selects the Appearance and Personalization link.
• The Font link has to be selected, so that the Fonts Window will be displayed by Windows.
• The Font Type column header can be used to group the fonts into their dissimilar types, rather than having the fonts in an alphabetical list.

To delete the font in windows, we have to select the delete function from the context menu. The context menu will appear when we right-click in the font window. The user has to validate himself to the User Account Control. Later, the font which has to be deleted should be selected and delete key has to be pressed. Delete File dialog box will be displayed by windows, which conforms the deletion of the font. The Yes button has to be selected to close the dialog box.