Fonts

Revision as of 17:17, 8 September 2026

Fonts describe how text looks (as opposed to how the characters are represented in text, which is the area of character encodings). There are a number of formats that describe fonts for computers.

Font formats

• Acorn Font
• Adobe Type 1 (PostScript Type 1, ATM, .pfb, .pfm, .afm)
• Amiga bitmap font
• BDF
• BRFNT
• ByteMap font format [1]
• Bitstream compressed outline (.bco)
• Calamus Font (.cfn)
• CHET font
• ChiWriter font
• CHR (Borland font)
• CID, TFM, OFM, OVF, OVP, Metafont - TeX Fonts and support data
• CPI
• Daisy-Dot font
• Data Fork Suitcase font (OS X, .dfont)
• dfont
• DRFONT
• Embedded OpenType (EOT)
• EVAfont driver
• F3 font
• FIGlet font
• FNT (Windows Font)
• FONTASY font (.fy*)
• FONTEDIT font
• FontEdit II COM file
• FontLab (.vfb)
• Font Mania (REXXCOM)
• Fontographer (.fog)
• FON (Windows Font with NE/PE container)
• Font Suitcase (Mac pre-OS X, uses resource fork)
• GEM bitmap font (.fnt)
• GEOS Font
• GRASP font
• HEX (Unifont)
• IntelliFont
• Interlace Character Editor font
• MPlayer bitmap font
• Open Font Format
• OpenType (.otf)
• OS/2 PM Font
• PaintJet soft font (.pjf)
• PC Screen Font
• PCF
• PCR font
• PFF2 (.pf2)
• PFR (TrueDoc)
• PK font
• PostScript font
• Raw Bitmap Font (.rbf)
• sfnt
• Signum font
• Slug fonts (.slug)
• SNF
• Speedo (.spd)
• Spline Font Database (.sfd)
• TexFont (.txf)
• TheDraw font (.tdf)
• TrueType (.ttf)
• Unified Font Object (.ufo, .ufoz)
• BSD / Sun vfont
• Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
• WFN
• WGT Font (.wfn)
• XFT Expert 3D Font

Font metrics

• AFM, PFM: See Adobe Type 1
• TeX Font Metrics (.tfm)

Glyph formats

• Glyph Interchange Format (.glif)

Other formats

• Adobe Font List (.lst)

Links

Fonts

• Comic Neue: an attempted replacement for Comic Sans
• Open Dyslexic font; designed to be more easily readable by dyslexics
• Don't Want the NSA to Read Your Documents? Use This Font.

Tools

• Type Sample: tool for identifying and sampling web fonts

Commentary

• Times is on my side
• What are the best programming fonts?
• Top 10 programming fonts
• 5 Genuinely Offensive Font Choices That Must Be Stopped
• This font has a big Impact on memes
• Color Emoji in Windows 8.1—The Future of Color Fonts?
• The science behind fonts (and how they make you feel)

Humor

• I'm Comic Sans, Asshole!
• Sans Bullshit Sans: leveraging the synergy of ligatures

Other links

• O'Reilly, "Fonts and Encodings", Yannis Haralambous, ISBN 978-0-596-10242-5
• Travelling Font Salesman - Typographic Book
• Creating a font from a classic comic
• Webfonts: Making Wikimedia projects readable for everyone
• Typography in 8 bits: System fonts
• FreeType 2: Supported Font Formats
• Magic sequences for font formats recognized by file command
• KB3013455 (MS15-010) causes font corruption (Windows)