Yes, you can do it, but not quite the way you describe. The best way to implement such a scheme would be by using Stylistic Sets 0 through 20. The downside of this is that you can’t give the sets names, and support is fairly limited. At present, the only apps I know of that support Stylistic Sets are Adobe InDesign and Mac OS X Cocoa-based apps.

However, unless you foresee the three different styles as likely being used together in the same word (i.e., with the three styles kerning with each other), you would be better off making them separate fonts.

What you’ve described sounds more like a TrueType Collection file (ttc). This is possible, but is fairly complicated, and probably not advantageous.

Jason C

Thank you very much Mark. I will try out what you advised. By the way there won’t be three different styles being used together in the same word.

Thank you jasonc, could you please let me know where I could find more about the TrueType Collection Files (ttc). Are they supported by Indesign?

Thank you jasonc, could you please let me know where I could find more about the TrueType Collection Files (ttc). Are they supported by Indesign?

the TTC file is just a single file that functions as multiple truetype files. In fact the user will see all components of the TTC as if they were separately installed fonts. But, that’s a limitation, they’re going to have to switch between styles just as if they were separate fonts.
For that reason, I don’t think this will help you much.

If you don’t mind reading spcs, there’s info about it about 1/2way down this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otff.htm