individual glyphs: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-font-rendering/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-...

individual glyphs: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-font-rendering/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-... kerning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning#Digital_typography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning#Digital_typography some stuff is embedded in the font, other things the OS will do on a "best guess" basis -- which is why things look radically different between operating systems and even between different apps on the same OS if they use their own font rendering. Check out a very high-quality open source font rendering engine: https://developer.gnome.org/pango/unstable/ https://developer.gnome.org/pango/unstable/