diff --git a/doc/export/fontmatch.m b/doc/export/fontmatch.m
index abd38c32..fe2dceae 100644
--- a/doc/export/fontmatch.m
+++ b/doc/export/fontmatch.m
@@ -1,13 +1,29 @@
 // 3 january 2017
 #import "uipriv_darwin.h"
 
-// Stupidity: Core Text requires an **exact match for the entire traits dictionary**, otherwise it will **drop ALL the traits**.
-// This seems to be true for every function in Core Text that advertises that it performs font matching; I can confirm at the time of writing this is the case for
-// - CTFontDescriptorCreateMatchingFontDescriptors() (though the conditions here seem odd)
-// - CTFontCreateWithFontDescriptor()
-// - CTFontCreateCopyWithAttributes()
-// We have to implement the closest match ourselves.
-// This needs to be done early in the matching process; in particular, we have to do this before adding any features (such as small caps), because the matching descriptors won't have those.
+// Core Text exposes font style info in two forms:
+// - Fonts with a QuickDraw GX font variation (fvar) table, a feature
+// 	adopted by OpenType, expose variations directly.
+// - All other fonts have Core Text normalize the font style info
+// 	into a traits dictionary.
+// Of course this setup doesn't come without its hiccups and
+// glitches. In particular, not only are the exact rules not well
+// defined, but also font matching doesn't work as we want it to
+// (exactly how varies based on the way the style info is exposed).
+// So we'll have to implement style matching ourselves.
+// We can use Core Text's matching to get a complete list of
+// *possible* matches, and then we can filter out the ones we don't
+// want ourselves.
+//
+// To make things easier for us, we'll match by converting Core
+// Text's values back into libui values. This allows us to also use the
+// normalization code for filling in uiDrawFontDescriptors from
+// Core Text fonts and font descriptors.
+//
+// Style matching needs to be done early in the font loading process;
+// in particular, we have to do this before adding any features,
+// because the descriptors returned by Core Text's own font
+// matching won't have any.
 
 struct closeness {
 	CFIndex index;
diff --git a/doc/export/fonttraits.m b/doc/export/fonttraits.m
index 10aa45ea..0c57b9d4 100644
--- a/doc/export/fonttraits.m
+++ b/doc/export/fonttraits.m
@@ -1,6 +1,23 @@
 // 1 november 2017
 #import "uipriv_darwin.h"
 
+// This is the part of the font style matching and normalization code
+// that handles fonts that use a traits dictionary.
+//
+// Matching stupidity: Core Text requires an **exact match for the
+// entire traits dictionary**, otherwise it will **drop ALL the traits**.
+//
+// Normalization stupidity: Core Text uses its own scaled values for
+// weight and width, but the values are different if the font is not
+// registered and if said font is TrueType or OpenType. The values
+// for all other cases do have some named constants starting with
+// OS X 10.11, but even these aren't very consistent in practice.
+//
+// Of course, none of this is documented anywhere, so I had to do
+// both trial-and-error AND reverse engineering to figure out what's
+// what. We'll just convert Core Text's values into libui constants
+// and use those for matching.
+
 static BOOL fontRegistered(CTFontDescriptorRef desc)
 {
 	CFNumberRef scope;
diff --git a/doc/export/fontvariation.m b/doc/export/fontvariation.m
index d97a6158..79236613 100644
--- a/doc/export/fontvariation.m
+++ b/doc/export/fontvariation.m
@@ -1,7 +1,25 @@
 // 2 november 2017
 #import "uipriv_darwin.h"
 
-// references:
+// This is the part of the font style matching and normalization code
+// that handles fonts that use the fvar table.
+//
+// Matching stupidity: Core Text **doesn't even bother** matching
+// these, even if you tell it to do so explicitly. It'll always return
+// all variations for a given font.
+//
+// Normalization stupidity: Core Text doesn't normalize the fvar
+// table values for us, so we'll have to do it ourselves. Furthermore,
+// Core Text doesn't provide an API for accessing the avar table, if
+// any, so we must do so ourselves. (TODO does Core Text even
+// follow the avar table if a font has it?)
+//
+// Thankfully, normalization is well-defined in both TrueType and
+// OpenType and seems identical in both, so we can just normalize
+// the values and then convert them linearly to libui values for
+// matching.
+//
+// References:
 // - https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM06/Chap6fvar.html
 // - https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM06/Chap6avar.html
 // - https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/fvar.htm