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8.12.3.37 IfcTextStyleFontModel

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8.12.3.37.1 Semantic definition

Definition according to W3C for Cascading Style Sheets: Setting font properties will be among the most common uses of style sheets. Unfortunately, there exists no well-defined and universally accepted taxonomy for classifying fonts, and terms that apply to one font family may not be appropriate for others. For example, 'italic' is commonly used to label slanted text, but slanted text may also be labeled as being Oblique, Slanted, Incline, Cursive or Kursiv. Therefore it is not a simple problem to map typical font selection properties to a specific font.

Font matching Because there is no accepted, universal taxonomy of font properties, matching of properties to font faces must be done carefully. The properties are matched in a well-defined order to ensure that the results of this matching process are as consistent as possible across user agents (assuming that the same library of font faces is presented to each of them).

  1. The user agent makes (or accesses) a database of relevant CSS1 properties of all the fonts of which the UA is aware. The UA may be aware of a font because it has been installed locally or it has been previously downloaded over the web. If there are two fonts with exactly the same properties, one of them is ignored.
  2. At a given element and for each character in that element, the UA assembles the font-properties applicable to that element. Using the complete set of properties, the UA uses the 'font-family' property to choose a tentative font family. The remaining properties are tested against the family according to the matching criteria described with each property. If there are matches for all the remaining properties, then that is the matching font face for the given element.
  3. If there is no matching font face within the 'font-family' being processed by step 2, and if there is a next alternative 'font-family' in the font set, then repeat step 2 with the next alternative 'font-family'.
  4. If there is a matching font face, but it doesn't contain a glyph for the current character, and if there is a next alternative 'font-family' in the font sets, then repeat step 2 with the next alternative 'font-family'.
  5. If there is no font within the family selected in 2, then use a UA-dependent default 'font-family' and repeat step 2, using the best match that can be obtained within the default font.

(The above algorithm can be optimized to avoid having to revisit the CSS1 properties for each character.)

The per-property matching rules from (2) above are as follows:

  1. 'font-style' is tried first. 'italic' will be satisfied if there is either a face in the UA's font database labeled with the CSS keyword 'italic' (preferred) or 'oblique'. Otherwise the values must be matched exactly or font-style will fail.
  2. 'font-variant' is tried next. 'normal' matches a font not labeled as 'small-caps'; 'small-caps' matches (1) a font labeled as 'small-caps', (2) a font in which the small caps are synthesized, or (3) a font where all lowercase letters are replaced by upper case letters. A small-caps font may be synthesized by electronically scaling uppercase letters from a normal font.
  3. 'font-weight' is matched next, it will never fail. (See 'font-weight' below.)
  4. 'font-size' must be matched within a UA-dependent margin of tolerance. (Typically, sizes for scalable fonts are rounded to the nearest whole pixel, while the tolerance for bitmapped fonts could be as large as 20%.) Further computations, are based on the 'font-size' value that is used, not the one that is specified.

The inherited Name attribute is used to define the font name, particularly in cases, where no (list of) font families are provided.

8.12.3.37.2 Entity inheritance

8.12.3.37.3 Attributes

# Attribute Type Description
IfcPreDefinedItem (1)
1 Name IfcLabel

The string by which the pre defined item is identified. Allowable values for the string are declared at the level of subtypes.

Click to show 1 hidden inherited attributes Click to hide 1 inherited attributes
IfcTextStyleFontModel (5)
2 FontFamily LIST [1:?] OF IfcTextFontName

The value is a prioritized list of font family names and/or generic family names. The first list entry has the highest priority, if this font fails, the next list item shall be used. The last list item should (if possible) be a generic family.

3 FontStyle OPTIONAL IfcFontStyle

The font style property selects between normal (sometimes referred to as "roman" or "upright"), italic and oblique faces within a font family.

4 FontVariant OPTIONAL IfcFontVariant

The font variant property selects between normal and small-caps.

5 FontWeight OPTIONAL IfcFontWeight

The font weight property selects the weight of the font.

6 FontSize IfcSizeSelect

The font size provides the size or height of the text font.

Table 8.12.3.37.A

8.12.3.37.4 Formal propositions

Name Description
MeasureOfFontSize

The size should be given by a positive length measure,

('IFC4X3_DEV_9d19c824.IFCLENGTHMEASURE' IN TYPEOF(SELF.FontSize)) AND
(SELF.FontSize > 0.)
Table 8.12.3.37.B

8.12.3.37.5 Formal representation

ENTITY IfcTextStyleFontModel
 SUBTYPE OF (IfcPreDefinedTextFont);
	FontFamily : LIST [1:?] OF IfcTextFontName;
	FontStyle : OPTIONAL IfcFontStyle;
	FontVariant : OPTIONAL IfcFontVariant;
	FontWeight : OPTIONAL IfcFontWeight;
	FontSize : IfcSizeSelect;
 WHERE
	MeasureOfFontSize : ('IFC4X3_DEV_9d19c824.IFCLENGTHMEASURE' IN TYPEOF(SELF.FontSize)) AND
(SELF.FontSize > 0.);
END_ENTITY;

8.12.3.37.6 References

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8.12.3.37.7 Changelog

8.12.3.37.7.1 IFC4

  • where rule, MeasureOfFontSize
  • where rule, WR31
  • attribute FontFamily optional, Is no longer optional