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  • I can’t find microsoft’s docs for pfm files any more, I think the format may be obsolete having been replaced by ntf.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

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Books

FontForge

• 

  Haralambous, Yannis, 2004, Fontes & 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.