Home > Programming > Fonts
Fonts
AKA Typefaces
The words you are reading are sometimes called "text", usually referring to the information in the sentences, etc. We typically don't pay attention to the specific shape of the letters.
Simple changes like bold and italic slightly modify the letter shapes, but retain the same basic letter forms.
When printing from a computer onto paper, you have probably used a word processor program like LibreOffice Writer or even Microsoft Word. Both of those programs have standard text font choices. On my computer, LibreOffice Writer defaults to Liberation Serif, and I can quickly change to Liberation Sans which is often used for headings, etc.
If you are not using a GNU/Linux computer, your default fonts might be something else, Times New Roman for the serif font or Callibri for the sans-serif (Windows/Mac). The fonts on your computer also define how your browser software renders web page text. Again, most of us don't really care much what the default font is.
I use Firefox as my web browser, and Firefox uses a font called Noto Serif. When I read this page, that is what these words look like.
For most purposes, "similar" text appearance is good enough. We want to easily read something, and the typical person really does not care what font is in use. You really need to look carefully to notice the tiny differences between the serif font images on this page.
However...
Web page designers are not often satisfied to see their beautiful ideas limited to what fonts your computer has on it. Web designers are like other visual artists, movie art directors, advertising people. They want to control the text on web pages. If you don't have the fonts they want, they need another way to get them to you.
Examples: Old News - Beautiful - Open Dyslexic Font
Paperstrips (A DIY effort)
Sometimes you just need a distinctive typeface, one which doesn't exist, as far as you know. In that case, you can forge ahead to learn how to do the thing you want. That's what happened to me. Paperstrips was born on October 16, 2023 with a little experiment in Inkscape, just four letters to test an idea.
