Outline font
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An outline font (or "vector font") is one defined as vector graphics, i.e. as a set of lines and curves, as opposed to a bitmap font.
Examples are PostScript and TrueType.
Outline font characters can be scaled to any size and otherwise transformed more easily than a bitmap font, and with more attractive results, though this requires a lot of numerical processing. The result of transforming a character in an outline font in a particular way is often saved as a bitmap in a font cache to avoid repeating the calculations if that character is to be drawn again.
Article based on outline font (http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?outline+font) at FOLDOC (http://www.foldoc.org).