International text and font guidance
Affected Platforms
Clients - Windows 8 | Windows 8.1 Servers - Windows Server 2012 | Windows Server 2012 R2
Description
Since before Windows 2000, text-display support for new scripts has been added in each major release of Windows. You can find descriptions of the changes made in each major release in the Script and Font Support for Windows article at the Go Global Development Center.
Note that support for a script may require certain changes to text stack components as well as changes to fonts. The Windows operating system has many text stack components: DirectWrite, GDI, Uniscribe, GDI+, WPF, RichEdit, ComCtl32, and others. The information provided pertains primarily to GDI and DirectWrite. It is also generally applicable to UI frameworks such as RichEdit or the MSHTML rendering agent used for Windows 8 Store apps and for rendering web content, though those components may exhibit certain differences.
Best Practices
Typography guidance for developers
Typography is at the heart of the Microsoft design language. Each of the Microsoft design principles reinforces the importance of typography. For the first time, app developers have a set of frameworks that support advanced typographic features. Go to Displaying and editing text for information about how to use JavaScript and HTML to display and edit text in Windows Store apps.
Font metrics
Font metrics are an area of particular importance to application developers. Font files contain various values related to vertical and horizontal metrics. These values are documented in the OpenType specification and these are exposed via a variety of APIs found at DWRITE_FONT_METRICS structure and at TEXTMETRIC Structure.