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scalable font Last modified: Sunday, September 01, 1996

A font represented in an object-oriented graphics language such as PostScript or TrueType. Such fonts are called scalable because the representation of the font defines the shape of each character (the typeface) but not the size. Given a typeface definition, a scalable-font system can produce characters at any size (or scale). Aside from offering innumerable sizes of each font, scalable fonts have an added advantage in that they make the most of an output device 's resolution. The more resolution a printer or monitor has, the better a scalable font will look. Scalable fonts are often called outline fonts because the most common method of representing scalable fonts is to define the outline of each character. Scalable fonts are also called object-oriented fonts or vector fonts.