System (typeface)

Proportional raster fonts distributed with Microsoft Windows

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For the font named System prior to Windows 3.0, see Fixedsys.

System

Category| Sans-serif
Designer(s)| Microsoft
Foundry| Microsoft
Date created| 1988

System is a family of proportional raster fonts distributed with Microsoft Windows.[1] Sharing the same letterforms as Microsoft Sans Serif which in turn is modeled after Helvetica, the font family contains fonts encoded in several Windows code pages, with multiple resolutions of the font for each code page. Fonts of different code pages have different point sizes. Under double-byte character set Windows environments, specifying this font may also cause applications to use non-System fonts when displaying texts.

In Windows 2000 or later, changing script setting in some application's font dialogue (e.g. Notepad, WordPad) causes the font to look completely different, even under same font size. Similarly, changing language setting for Windows applications that do not support Unicode will alter the appearance of the font.

When Windows is running with low system resources, System is the fallback font used for displaying texts.

The copyright message in the .FON file says the font was designed by Microsoft Corporation in 1988–1989.

Microsoft also created CGA, EGA and 8514/A versions of the font. The 8514 variant remained in use on modern Windows Versions such as Windows 10 and 11 versions as a high-DPI version.

The System font

## See also

[edit]

* Terminal
* Fixedsys

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "About Microsoft Typography". Microsoft. June 11, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2024. "Microsoft licensed bitmap fonts from Bitstream, but made significant modifications to them. The first Windows user interface font was 'SysFixed' the fixed-pitch bitmap font included with Windows 1. Windows 2 added support for the proportional bitmap font 'System'."

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Microsoft Windows typefaces

Latin,
Greek,
Cyrillic|

| Sans-serif|

* Aptos
* Arial, Arial Rounded
* Arial Unicode MS
* Bahnschrift
* Calibri
* Candara
* Century Gothic
* Corbel
* Franklin Gothic Medium
* Grandview
* Lucida Sans Unicode
* Microsoft Sans Serif
* News Gothic MT
* Seaford
* Segoe
* Skeena
* System
* Tahoma
* Tenorite
* Trebuchet MS
* Verdana

|

Serif|

* Book Antiqua
* Calisto MT
* Cambria
* Constantia
* Georgia
* Lucida
* Palatino Linotype
* Times New Roman

|

Script / Display|

* Bauhaus 93
* Broadway
* Comic Sans MS
* Cooper Black
* Copperplate Gothic
* Freestyle Script
* Gabriola
* Goudy Stout
* Harlow Solid Italic
* Impact
* Latin Wide
* Westminster

|

Monospaced|

* Consolas
* Courier New
* Fixedsys
* Lucida Console
* OCR A Extended
* Terminal

|

Hebrew|

* Aharoni
* Arial
* Courier New
* Lucida Sans Unicode
* Microsoft Sans Serif
* Segoe UI Mono
* Tahoma
* Times New Roman

Arabic|

* Arabic
* Arial
* Courier New
* Microsoft Sans Serif
* Segoe UI
* Tahoma
* Times New Roman
* Traditional Arabic

Thai|

* Microsoft Sans Serif
* Segoe UI Mono
* Tahoma

Chinese|

| Simplified|

* Microsoft YaHei
* SimHei
* SimSun

|

Traditional|

* Microsoft JhengHei
* MingLiU

Korean|

* Batang
* Dotum
* Gulim
* Malgun Gothic

Japanese|

* Meiryo
* MS Gothic
* MS Mincho

Indic scripts|

* Gautami
* Nirmala UI
* Vrinda

Other|

* Cambria Math
* Ebrima
* Euphemia
* Gadugi
* Marlett
* Nyala
* Sylfaen
* Symbol
* Webdings
* Wingdings

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