Standard implementation of GlyphVector used by Font, GlyphList, and SunGraphics2D. The main issues involve the semantics of the various transforms (font, glyph, device) and their effect on rendering and metrics. Very, very unfortunately, the translation component of the font transform affects where the text gets rendered. It offsets the rendering origin. None of the other metrics of the glyphvector are affected, making them inconsistent with the rendering behavior. I think the translation component of the font would be better interpreted as the translation component of a per-glyph transform, but I don't know if this is possible to change. After the font transform is applied, the glyph transform is applied. This makes glyph transforms relative to font transforms, if the font transform changes, the glyph transform will have the same (relative) effect on the outline of the glyph. The outline and logical bounds are passed through the glyph transform before being returned. The glyph metrics ignore the glyph transform, but provide the outline bounds and the advance vector of the glyph (the latter will be rotated if the font is rotated). The default layout places each glyph at the end of the advance vector of the previous glyph, and since the glyph transform translates the advance vector, this means a glyph transform affects the positions of all subsequent glyphs if defaultLayout is called after setting a glyph transform. In the glyph info array, the bounds are the outline bounds including the glyph transform, and the positions are as computed, and the advances are the deltas between the positions. (There's a bug in the logical bounds of a rotated glyph for composite fonts, it's not to spec (in 1.4.0, 1.4.1, 1.4.2). The problem is that the rotated composite doesn't handle the multiple ascents and descents properly in both x and y. You end up with a rotated advance vector but an unrotated ascent and descent.) Finally, the whole thing is transformed by the device transform to position it on the page. Another bug: The glyph outline seems to ignore fractional point size information, but the images (and advances) don't ignore it. Small fonts drawn at large magnification have odd advances when fractional metrics is off-- that's because the advances depend on the frc. When the frc is scaled appropriately, the advances are fine. FM or a large frc (high numbers) make the advances right. The buffer aa flag doesn't affect rendering, the glyph vector renders as AA if aa is set in its frc, and as non-aa if aa is not set in its frc. font rotation, baseline, vertical etc. Font rotation and baseline Line metrics should be measured along a unit vector pi/4 cc from the baseline vector. For 'horizontal' fonts the baseline vector is the x vector passed through the font transform (ignoring translation), for 'vertical' it is the y vector. This definition makes ascent, descent, etc independent of shear, so shearing can be used to simulate italic. This means no fonts have 'negative ascents' or 'zero ascents' etc. Having a coordinate system with orthogonal axes where one is parallel to the baseline means we could use rectangles and interpret them in terms of this coordinate system. Unfortunately there is support for rotated fonts in the jdk already so maintaining the semantics of existing code (getlogical bounds, etc) might be difficult. A font transform transforms both the baseline and all the glyphs in the font, so it does not rotate the glyph w.r.t the baseline. If you do want to rotate individual glyphs, you need to apply a glyph transform. If performDefaultLayout is called after this, the transformed glyph advances will affect the glyph positions. useful additions - select vertical metrics - glyphs are rotated pi/4 cc and vertical metrics are used to align them to the baseline. - define baseline for font (glyph rotation not linked to baseline) - define extra space (delta between each glyph along baseline) - define offset (delta from 'true' baseline, impacts ascent and descent as these are still computed from true basline and pinned to zero, used in superscript).