1. A method for rendering text from stored font data, comprising: receiving at a rendering engine a request to render a glyph; in response to the request, the rendering engine accessing a font data structure stored in a computer readable medium, the font data structure including common element data and unique element data for a plurality of glyphs; the rendering engine constructing a glyph skeleton using the common element data and unique element data; and the rendering engine rendering the glyph for display using the glyph skeleton.