How to add multiple font files for the same font?

Question

I'm looking at the MDC page for the @font-face CSS rule, but I don't get one thing. I have separate files for bold, italic and bold + italic. How can I embed all three files in one @font-face rule? For example, if I have:

@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("./fonts/DejaVuSans.ttf") format("ttf");
}
strong {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    font-weight: bold;
}

The browser will not know which font to be used for bold (because that file is DejaVuSansBold.ttf), so it will default to something I probably don't want. How can I tell the browser all the different variants I have for a certain font?

Answer 1

The solution seems to be to add multiple @font-face rules, for example:

@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans.ttf");
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
    font-style: italic, oblique;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic, oblique;
}

By the way, it would seem Google Chrome doesn't know about the format("ttf") argument, so you might want to skip that.

(This answer was correct for the CSS 2 specification. CSS3 only allows for one font-style rather than a comma-separated list.)

Answer 2

As of CSS3, the spec has changed, allowing for only a single font-style. A comma-separated list (per CSS2) will be treated as if it were normal and override any earlier (default) entry. This will make fonts defined in this way appear italic permanently.

@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans.ttf");
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
    font-style: italic;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
    font-style: oblique;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVu Sans";
    src: url("fonts/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: oblique;
}

In most cases, italic will probably be sufficient and oblique rules won't be necessary if you take care to define whichever you will use and stick to it.

Answer 3

To have font variation working correctly, I had to reverse the order of @font-face in CSS.

@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVuMono";
    src: url("styles/DejaVuSansMono-BoldOblique.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic, oblique;
}   
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVuMono";
    src: url("styles/DejaVuSansMono-Oblique.ttf");
    font-style: italic, oblique;
}
@font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVuMono";
    src: url("styles/DejaVuSansMono-Bold.ttf");
    font-weight: bold;
}
 @font-face {
    font-family: "DejaVuMono";
    src: url("styles/DejaVuSansMono.ttf");
}