Theme Fonts

As well as storing standard font face information, run properties may store an abstraction for font face information known as theme fonts. Theme fonts are values that specify that the font face information for a run is not stored in the attribute value using the appropriate font face name, but is rather a reference into the document's theme part, allowing font face information to be stored and managed centrally as part of the theme data. It is appropriate to think of theme fonts as a "style for fonts" in the same way in which a style is a reference to the formatting that is stored centrally in another part.

Theme fonts are specified using the theme attribute variants in the <rFonts> element, rather than storing the actual font face name.

For example, consider a run of text defined as follows:

<w:r>
  <w:rPr>
    <w:rFonts w:asciiTheme="minorHAnsi" w:hAnsiTheme="minorHAnsi" />
  </w:rPr>
  …
</w:r>

The <rFonts> element's attribute values of @asciiTheme and @hAnsiTheme both store a reference to a theme font stored in the document's theme part (i.e., there is no font with the primary name minorHAnsi).

Once this information has been established, it is combined with the theme language data stored in the document's settings to resolve the appropriate theme fonts from the theme part. The syntax and format of the theme part are stored in the DrawingML syntax and discussed in that section.