Core Text is the modern text layout and rendering framework on Apple's Mac OS X and iOS operating systems.
Core Text is the modern text layout and rendering framework on Apple's Mac OS X and iOS operating systems.
On both platforms, it integrates with the Foundation framework's NSAttributedString and Core Foundation's CFAttributedString. On Mac OS X, Core Text classes are also toll-free bridged with their AppKit counterparts; for example, CTFont with NSFont. Thus, Core Text integrates very cleanly into the Cocoa text-drawing API, while at the same time being its basis.
Applications that need to do highly customized text rendering, beyond the basic capabilities provided by Cocoa and Cocoa Touch classes such as NSTextView and UITextView, will probably need to use Core Text.
Further reading:
- Core Text Programming Guide
- Core Text Reference Collection (class references)
- Attributed String Programming Guide (Cocoa/Cocoa Touch)
- NSAttributedString class reference
- AppKit Framework Reference
- Apple's Cocoa Text System Overview
- Jacob Rus's Customizing the Cocoa Text System (largely from a user perspective, but provides good insight for programmers as well)
- Text, Web, and Editing Programming Guide for iOS
