5.4 Fonts

Mixed codeset strings cannot usually be rendered with a single font. A font set is a collection of fonts suitable for rendering all codesets in a locale's encoding, and includes data about the locale in which it was created. For example, in the Korean locale, both the ASCII and Korean fonts are loaded. This is known as FontSet in the X11 Window System. The number of fonts and their character-set registry in a FontSet vary from one locale to another. Because the Solaris operating environment manages the FontSet at run time, applications do not need to know that multiple fonts are being used. You just need to use FontSet interfaces.

Common font family names, such as Times and Courier, are not usually available in multibyte locales. Locale-sensitive font family names should not be hard coded in applications. In the Common Desktop Environment, all locales have a common set of font alias names, such as dt-application.