Font substitution is the process of using one
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
in place of another when the intended typeface either is not available or does not contain
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s for the required
characters
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
.
Font substitution can be aided by:
* classifying fonts into
generic font families, such that for example a
sans serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
font is substituted by another sans serif font.
* font substitutions defined in operating system's font configuration for concrete font names (font families), such that for example
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
font is substituted by metric-compatible font
Liberation Sans
Liberation or liberate may refer to:
Film and television
* ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War
* "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode
* "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode
Gaming
* '' Liberati ...
or
Nimbus Sans L
Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.
Nimbus Sans
It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages.
The font names ending with ...
.
* font substitutions defined in application software's (e.g. text processor) font configuration for concrete font names.
When font substitution is being used to find a replacement for an unavailable character, it can lead to inconsistent visual appearance as part of a word or sentence is displayed in one font and another part is displayed in the substituted font. A method to work around this problem is to display the entire word or paragraph in the substituted font. Nevertheless, font substitution may be critical to scripts not well supported by a large font inventory having the required Unicode range.
Examples of systems that perform font substitution include
fontconfig
Fontconfig (or fontconfig) is a free software program library designed to provide configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs. Fontconfig was originally written and maintained by Keith Packard, and is currently maintai ...
,
Adobe Reader
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (forme ...
,
Unidrv UniDrv (Universal Printer Driver or Unidriver) is a GDI-based Microsoft Windows universal printer driver and architecture for non- PostScript printers. It is used to simplify driver development of non-PostScript printers (also called Winprinters) ...
,
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
(since Word 2002),
Libre Office
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite consi ...
and
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...
.
Not all systems that claim to offer font substitution are able to substitute for missing characters; some are only capable of substituting for missing fonts.
Major modern
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
s are capable of font substitution.
See also
*
Fallback font
A fallback font is a reserve typeface containing symbols for as many Unicode characters as possible. When a display system encounters a character that is not part of the repertoire of any of the other available fonts, a symbol from a fallback font ...
*
Web typography
Web typography is the use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each web browser. There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display u ...
References
External links
Description of font substitution in fontconfig
Substitution
Substitution may refer to:
Arts and media
*Chord substitution, in music, swapping one chord for a related one within a chord progression
* Substitution (poetry), a variation in poetic scansion
* "Substitution" (song), a 2009 song by Silversun Pi ...
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