Overview - Font Style Management

MathFlow allows users to style characters and expressions by requesting particular font faces, weights and slants. While users can specify any font, weight or slant in the underlying MathML markup, what MathFlow actually renders is limited by the availability of fonts on the system. MathFlow uses two rendering engines, a Java-based engine for the Editor, and a Win32-based engine for preview images and PDF composition. The font and style behavior of both engines is similar, but there are some differences in details as described below.

There are three cases that must be distinguished to understand how MathFlow selects fonts:

Default Rendering

When no explicit style information is specified, the MathFlow rendering engines apply internal algorithms to select fonts. The Java engine firsts attempts to locate characters in a set of preferred system fonts: Times New Roman for alpha numeric characters, Euclid Symbol for common symbol characters, and Code 2000 for rarer symbol characters. Note that Euclid Symbol is included with MathFlow, but Code 2000 must be obtained separately. The choice of preferred system fonts is configurable. See Configuring Preferred Fonts.

When characters cannot be located in MathFlow's preferred system fonts, the Java engine also contains built-in fonts containing around 500 symbol characters, and will use these fonts instead. Characters that cannot be located either in preferred system fonts or internal fonts render as missing glyphs, generally represented by an empty box. In these cases, explicitly specifying a system font known to contain the character is generally the best solution.

The Win32 rendering engine employs a similar, but more complex model. Characters are first sought in a collection of preferred system fonts, primarily Times New Roman, Symbol and MT Extra. For certain classes of characters, Mathematica fonts, Euclid fonts, and/or Adobe's Mathematical Pi fonts may also be utilized. When characters cannot be located in preferred fonts, the rendering engine searches all available system fonts. At this point, there is no control over the order in which fonts are searched, which can lead to unpredictable results. As in the Java case, explicitly specifying a system font known to contain the character is generally the best solution.

Pre-defined MathML Styles

MathML contains twelve pre-defined logical styles, such as "sans-serif" and "script." When one of these styles is selected, both the Java and Win32 engines reformulate these requests in terms of specific fonts. As above, the renderers first look for characters in preferred fonts, and then fall back to either internal fonts or other system fonts, depending on the rendering engine.

User-defined Custom Styles

For user defined custom styles, both engines will attempt to literally honor the request. If the specified font is not available, an attempt is made to render the character in some font containing the character. If no font can be found, the character is rendered with a missing glyph indicator.