ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Using the Flash Text Engine
Defining font characteristics (FontDescription object)
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
The fontName property of the FontDescription object can be a single name or a comma-separated list of names. For
example, in a list such as “Arial, Helvetica, _sans”, the text engine looks for “Arial” first, then “Helvetica”, and finally
“_sans”, if it can’t find either of the first two fonts. The set of font names include three generic device font names:
“_sans”, “_serif”, and “_typewriter”. They map to specific device fonts, depending on the playback system. It is good
practice to specify default names such as these in all font descriptions that use device fonts. If no fontName is specified,
“_serif” is used as the default.
The fontPosture property can either be set to the default (FontPosture.NORMAL) or to italics
(FontPosture.ITALIC). The fontWeight property can be set to the default (FontWeight.NORMAL) or to bold
(FontWeight.BOLD).
var fd1:FontDescription = new FontDescription();
fd1.fontName = "Arial, Helvetica, _sans";
fd1.fontPosture = FontPosture.NORMAL;
fd1.fontWeight = FontWeight.BOLD;
Embedded versus device fonts
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
The fontLookup property of the FontDescription object specifies whether the text engine looks for a device font or
embedded font to render text. If a device font (FontLookup.DEVICE) is specified, the runtime looks for the font on the
playback system. Specifying an embedded font (FontLookup.EMBEDDED_CFF) causes the runtime to look for an
embedded font with the specified name in the SWF file. Only embedded CFF (Compact Font Format) fonts work with
this setting. If the specified font is not found, a fallback device font is used.
Device fonts result in a smaller SWF file size. Embedded fonts give you greater fidelity across platforms.
var fd1:FontDescription = new FontDescription();
fd1.fontLookup = FontLookup.EMBEDDED_CFF;
fd1.fontName = "Garamond, _serif";
Rendering mode and hinting
Flash Player 10 and later, Adobe AIR 1.5 and later
CFF (Compact Font Format) rendering is available starting with Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5. This type of font
rendering makes text more legible, and permits higher-quality display of fonts at small sizes. This setting only applies
to embedded fonts. FontDescription defaults to this setting (RenderingMode.CFF) for the renderingMode
property. You can set this property to RenderingMode.NORMAL to match the type of rendering used by Flash Player
7 or earlier versions.
When CFF rendering is selected, a second property, cffHinting, controls how a font’s horizontal stems are fit to the
subpixel grid. The default value, CFFHinting.HORIZONTAL_STEM, uses CFF hinting. Setting this property to
CFFHinting.NONE removes hinting, which is appropriate for animation or for large font sizes.
var fd1:FontDescription = new FontDescription();
fd1.renderingMode = RenderingMode.CFF;
fd1.cffHinting = CFFHinting.HORIZONTAL_STEM;
Last updated 6/6/2012
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