A meandering bibliography of font related things¶

Font File Formats¶

  • PostScript Type1

    • Supplement (discussion of multiple master fonts & counter hints)
    • Format
    • PostScript unicode character names
    • PostScript Language Reference Manual
  • PostScript Multiple Master

    • Type1 MM format specification (in the Type1 Supplement)
    • Design considerations
    • Naming requirements
    • Type2 (In March of 2000, Adobe removed multiple master support from Type2 and CFF files)
      • Type2 MM format specification (In OBSOLETE type2 spec)
      • CFF MM format specification (In OBSOLETE CFF spec)
  • CID keyed fonts

  • PostSript Type2

    • Compact Font Format Specification (CFF)
    • For more information see under OpenType fonts
  • PostScript Type3

    • PostScript Language Reference Manual 3.0 (see section 5.7)
  • PostScript Type14 (Chameleon)

    • The PLRM (5.8.1) documents that this font format is undocumented.
  • PostScript Type42

  • Adobe Feature File (fea)

    • (FontForge’s implementation of this format is a superset of what Adobe accepts, and a superset of what Adobe documents. Neither can completely describe opentype. Adobe claims they will update the feat spec in late 2007).
  • AFM

  • PFM

    • I can’t find microsoft’s docs for pfm files any more, I think the format may be obsolete having been replaced by ntf.
    • Adobe’s notes on PFM files for two byte fonts
    • Third Party description
  • NTF

    • This format is supposed to replace the pfm files above in windows >2000. I can’t find any docs on it.
  • BDF

    • X11 Long Font Descriptor spec defines standard X BDF Properties
    • ABF – Binary format
    • Extensions to BDF for greymap support
  • True Type Standard

    (Sadly different sources have slightly different definitions of less important parts of the standard, be warned)

    • Apple (I find Apple’s prose difficult, and sometimes misleading. I suggest using a different source when possible)
    • Microsoft
    • random useful site
    • TTC – True Type Font Collection
  • Apple Advanced Typography extensions to TrueType

  • Apple distortable font (variation tables) – vaguely equivalent to Multiple Master fonts for TrueType

    • fvar (font variations)
    • gvar (glyph variations)
    • cvar (cvt variations)
    • avar (axis variations)
  • OpenType (postscript embedded in a truetype wrapper, or advanced typography tables in a truetype wrapper)

    • PostScript Type2
    • CFF
    • Adobe’s version of file format
      • SING Gaiji extention (more information is available in the documentation subdirectory of the Glyphlet GDK)
    • Microsoft’s version
    • Possible source of script codes for scripts not specified by MS/Adobe: ISO 15924
    • Microsoft’s full list of locale/language IDs (not all are supported, some may never be)
  • Open Font Format Specification (ISO/IEC 14496-22:2007)

    (based on OpenType 1.4 but an international standard)

  • Apple’s sfnt wrapper around a PS type1 font

  • Various bitmap only sfnt formats

  • WOFF – Web Open Font Format, mozilla’s compressed sfnt format

  • PostScript Type42 (the opposite of opentype, it’s truetype embedded in postscript)

  • SVG 1.1 fonts

    • SVG 1.2 font hinting proposal
  • Macintosh font formats

  • Windows raster font formats

    • FNT – Windows version 2
    • FNT – Windows version 3
    • Some info on FON file format
  • X11 pcf format

    • Sadly there is no real standard for this. There’s the source code used by X11.
    • So I wrote my own description…
  • PC Screen Font (psf/psfu/psf2)

  • TeX font formats

    • pk packed bitmap format

    • gf generic font (bitmap) format

    • tfm metrics format

    • To make these viewable you probably want to do something like:

      $ weave pktype.web

      $ pdftex pktype.tex

  • SIL Graphite Fonts (smart font extension to TrueType. Additional tables containing rules for composing, reordering, spacing, etc. glyphs)

  • Palm pilot fonts (pdb files)

    • font record format
    • pdb file format
  • OpenDoc. Sadly Proprietary so I shan’t support it.

  • Acorn RISC OS font format (these fonts are often zipped up with a non-standard zip).

  • Ikarus IK format is documented in Peter Karow’s book * Digital Formats for Typefaces,* Appendices G&I. (copies may still be available from URW++)

    Interestingly the exact format of a curve is up to the interpretation program.

  • sfd files (FontForge’s internal spline font database format)

  • cidmap files (Fontforge’s format for mapping cids to unicode)

  • XML formats

    • TTX – TrueType XML
    • UFO & GLIF – Unified font objects & Glyph Interchange Format

Other font links

  • Adobe’s downloadable font spec
  • Adobe’s technical notes
  • Adobe’s Font Policies document
  • PostScript reference manual
    • (old reference manual)
  • Microsoft’s downloadable fonts
  • Downloadable PS CID CJK fonts (this site also has cmap files)`others <ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/nutshell/cjkv/adobe/samples/>`__
  • Downloadable OTF CID CJK fonts (this site also has cmap files)
  • Most recent cid2code tables that I’m aware of
  • PANOSE
    • PANOSE Classification Metrics Guide by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, 1991 - 1997
    • PANOSE structure (Windows)
    • PANOSE: An Ideal Typeface Matching System for the Web by Robert Stevahn, 1996
    • PANOSE 2.0 White Paper by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, 1993
    • PANOSE on Wikipedia
    • Classifying Arabic Fonts Based on Design Characteristics: PANOSE-APANOSE by Jehan Janbi, 2016

Related software¶

  • Gimp
  • Gimp users group

Unicode¶

  • Unicode consortium
    • Apple’s corporate use extensions (0xF850-0xF8FE)
    • Adobe’s corporate use extensions (0xF634-0F7FF) (also includes some of Apple’s codes above)
    • FontForge’s corporate use extensions (0xF500-0xF580)
    • A registry of code points in the private area (does not include any of Adobe’s or Apple’s codepoints)
    • American Mathematical Society’s corporate use extensions (0xE000-0xF7D7)
    • MicroSoft uses 0xF000-0xF0FF in their “Symbol” encoding (3,0) when they want to an uninterpretted encoding vector (ie. a mapping from byte to glyph with no meaning attached to the mapping)
  • Unicode en français
  • Pictures of the characters
  • Unicode script assignments
    • ISO 15924 script list
  • Unicode Bloopers
  • PostScript Unicode names
    • Glyph names for new fonts (these are the names FontForge automatically assigns to glyphs)
    • Adobe Glyph Names provides further synonyms
    • Glyph name limitations
  • Linux issues
    • FAQ
    • HOWTO
    • Linux Unicode man page

Other Encodings¶

  • Microsoft’s Codepages, and at the unicode site
  • Mac Encodings
  • MacRoman
  • IPA
  • GB 18030
  • TeX latin encodings (possibly also on your local machine in /usr/share/texmf/dvips/base)
  • TeX cyrillic encodings

Books¶

FontForge¶

  • Fontes et Codages

    Haralambous, Yannis, 2004, Fontes & Codages

  • Fontes et Codages

    Haralambous, Yannis (translated: P Scott Horne), 2006, Fonts & Encodings

Typography¶

Font editor concepts¶

Karow, Peter, 1994, Font Technology, Description and Tools

Karow, Peter, 1987, Digital Formats for Typefaces

TeX¶

Hoenig, Alan TeX Unbound: LaTeX and TeX Strategies for Fonts, Graphics & More

Knuth, Donald, 1979, TeX and METAFONT, New Directions in Typesetting

Interview¶

I was interviewed by the Open Source Publishing people at LGM2. There’s an mp3 file of the interview available on their site.

FontForge

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    • A meandering bibliography of font related things
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