One of the first things you want to understand when working with typography are the concepts of families, faces, and fonts. This document provides some extra explanations about these items beyond what a basic glossary might provide.
Family
A family is a high level typographical classification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_family_(HTML)
TypeFace (Face)
blah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface
Font
A font is a particular implementation of a typeface. Whereas Courier is
a typeface, 12 point bold Courier is a font. There is no precise
definition of a font, as different systems define things in different
ways. For example, some systems see font underlining as being a unique
part of a font, whereas other systems see underlining as merely a
decoration on an existing font.
How do .ttf (TrueType Font) files fit into this?
Hierarchy tree
////////////////////////////////////////
//
Here is an example of the font heirarchy, so that we can understand how
the
//
the data structures below are layed out. We assume here that a face and
family
//
are equivalent, whereas strictly speaking this isn't so in the
conventions of
//
typography.
//
//
Arial
// Arial.ttf
// normal
// 7 pt
// 9 pt
// ArialBold.ttf
// bold
// 4 pt
// 5 pt
// ArialItalic.ttf
// italic
// 5 pt
// 8 pt
//
Courier
//
CourierMultiple.ttf (note
that this .ttf file has multiple font types within it)
// bold
// 8 pt
// 9 pt
// italic
// 8 pt
// 9 pt
////////////////////////////////////////