15.1. LOGICAL FONTS

Chapter 14 covers substantial details about the three major font technologies used in Windows programming—that is, bitmap fonts, vector fonts, and TrueType/OpenType fonts. Even with in-depth knowledge of physical fonts, working directly with them is hard, time consuming, and not a good way to spend an application programmer's time.

To make text drawing easier for Windows applications, physical fonts are not handled directly by application programs, not even the graphics engine. An application program normally deals only with logical fonts through a set of API built around logical fonts. Physical fonts are handled only by font drivers, which are at the same level as graphics device drivers. The Windows NT/2000 graphics engine implements three font drivers for three types of fonts supported by Microsoft directly. ATM fonts are supported by a separate ATM font driver (atmfd.dll). The graphics engine communicates with the font drivers to provide support for logical fonts.