See Figure 1-2 . Likewise, when QuickDraw draws a string of text, it keeps advancing the pen location as it draws, so that the current location ends up at the right end of the string. QuickDraw's text-measuring capabilities are as important as its drawing capabilities. In many cases, before you draw a line of text, you first need to know its length in pixels, so that you can correctly place it on the screen and be assured that it does not overrun its allotted space. The Font Manager keeps track of all fonts available to an application.
Fonts are strongly language-dependent.
Fonts also implement additional symbols and forms, such as ligatures, needed by that writing system. All Macintosh text-handling routines work with both types of fonts. Fonts can also be classified by the sizes of the character sets they implement. QuickDraw and the Text Utilities provide routines that allow you to order and draw your text properly regardless of its line direction or directions. On a line of text, screen position is in terms of pixel offset from the left edge of the text-drawing area, regardless of the line direction of the text being drawn.