Font

A font (or computer font) is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font first referred to a set of metal type sorts in one style and size, since the 1990s it is generally used to refer to a scalable set of digital shapes that may be printed at many different sizes.

There are three basic kinds of computer font file data formats:

Bitmap fonts are faster and easier to use in computer code, but non-scalable, requiring a separate font for each size. Outline and stroke fonts can be resized using a single font and substituting different measurements for components of each glyph, but are somewhat more complicated to render on screen than bitmap fonts, as they require additional computer code to render the outline to a bitmap for display on screen or in print. Although all types are still in use, most fonts seen and used on computers are outline fonts.
 * Bitmap fonts consist of a matrix of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size.
 * Outline fonts (also called vector fonts) use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulae to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.
 * Stroke fonts use a series of specified lines and additional information to define the profile, or size and shape of the line in a specific face, which together describe the appearance of the glyph.

A raster image can be displayed in a different size only with some distortion, but renders quickly; outline or stroke image formats are resizable but take more time to render as pixels must be drawn from scratch each time they are displayed.

Fonts are designed and created using font editors. Fonts specifically designed for the computer screen and not printing are known as screen fonts.

Fonts can be monospaced (i.e., every character is plotted a constant distance from the previous character that it is next to, while drawing) or proportional (each character has its own width). However, the particular font-handling application can affect the spacing, particularly when doing justification.