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- I can't find microsoft's docs for pfm files any more, I think the format may be obsolete having been replaced by ntf.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