Font Properties: why have a 'Bold' checkbox? Confusing!

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jedbadda
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2016 9:19 pm

Font Properties: why have a 'Bold' checkbox? Confusing!

Post by jedbadda »

Can someone please explain the difference between:

-selecting 'Bold' as the Font Subfamily

-selecting '700-Bold' as the Weight

-checking the 'Bold' check box

Why is there a 'Bold' checkbox? Or an 'Italic' checkbox for that matter? What do they do?

If you want the font to be Bold, just select Bold in the Weight dropdown, right?

This is not explained in the manual, and this is so confusing/frustrating!
Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Font Properties: why have a 'Bold' checkbox? Confusing!

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

jedbadda wrote:If you want the font to be Bold, just select Bold in the Weight dropdown, right?
Wrong! Enable the checkbox if you want the font to be identified by Windows as a bold type style.

Welcome to the complicated world of fonts. Open Arial Black (Regular) and look at the Font Properties Identification tab. The font subfamily is Regular, the Weight is 800 (Black) and the bold flag is not set.

Font can have multiple subfamilies, but some applications may know only about Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. In a DTP application like PagePlus, one can access more styles only through the Character Formatting dialogue: only four can be accessed by the usual Ctrl B, Ctrl I shortcuts.
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jedbadda
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2016 9:19 pm

Re: Font Properties: why have a 'Bold' checkbox? Confusing!

Post by jedbadda »

Thank you for the reply.

So when you say 'identified by Windows as a bold type style' do you mean for applications like MS Office, where you click a 'Bold' button and it automatically changes to the 'Bold' version of the font? Like when you click the 'B' button in Word?

I primarily use fonts on the Adobe programs (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop). I am assuming that 'Subfamily' means the name of the style (Light, Light Italic, Bold, Semibold, etc) and 'Weight' (300, 500, 700) determines the order in which the Subfamilies are listed in the secondary font menu?
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