PostScript fonts are font files encoded in
outline font
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
specifications developed by
Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
for professional
digital typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
. This system uses
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
file format to encode font information.
"PostScript fonts" may also separately be used to refer to a basic set of fonts included as standards in the PostScript system, such as
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...
,
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
, and
Avant Garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical De ...
.
History
Type 1 and
Type 3 fonts, though introduced by Adobe in 1984 as part of the
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
page description language, did not see widespread use until March 1985 when the first laser printer to use the PostScript language, the
Apple LaserWriter
The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, ...
, was introduced.
Even then, in 1985, the outline fonts were resident only in the printer, and the screen used bitmap fonts as substitutes for outline fonts.
Although originally part of PostScript, Type 1 fonts used a simplified set of drawing operations compared to ordinary PostScript (programmatic elements such as loops and variables were removed, much like
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
), but Type 1 fonts added
"hints" to help low-resolution rendering. Originally, Adobe kept the details of their hinting scheme undisclosed and used a (simple) encryption scheme to protect Type 1 outlines and hints, which still persists today (although the encryption scheme and key has since been published by Adobe). Despite these measures, Adobe's scheme was quickly reverse-engineered by other players in the industry. Adobe nevertheless required anyone working with Type 1 fonts to license their technology.
Type 3 fonts allowed for all the sophistication of the PostScript language, but without the standardized approach to hinting (though some companies such as ATF implemented their own proprietary schemes) or an encryption scheme. Other differences further added to the confusion.
The cost of the licensing was considered very high at this time, and Adobe continued to stonewall on more attractive rates. It was this issue that led Apple to design their own system,
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
, around 1991. Immediately following the announcement of TrueType, Adobe published ”Adobe type 1 font format”,
a detailed specification for the format. Font development tools such as
Fontographer
Fontographer (FOG) is a font editor for Windows and macOS; it is used to create digital fonts. It was originally developed by Altsys but is now owned by FontLab Ltd.
History Altsys Corporation
In December 1984, James R. Von Ehr II founded the ...
added the ability to create Type 1 fonts. The Type 2 format has since been used as one basis for the modern
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
Format.
Technology
By using
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
(PS) language, the glyphs are described with
cubic Bézier curve
A Bézier curve ( ) is a parametric curve used in computer graphics and related fields. A set of discrete "control points" defines a smooth, continuous curve by means of a formula. Usually the curve is intended to approximate a real-world shape t ...
s (as opposed to the
quadratic curve
In mathematics, a conic section, quadratic curve or conic is a curve obtained as the intersection of the surface of a cone with a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a spe ...
s of
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
), and thus a single set of glyphs can be resized through simple mathematical transformations, which can then be sent to a PostScript-ready
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
. Because the data of Type 1 is a description of the outline of a glyph and not a
raster image
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
(i.e. a
bitmap
In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array
A bit array (also known as bitmask, bit map, bit set, bit string, or bit vector) is an array data structure that c ...
), Type 1 fonts are commonly referred to as "outline fonts," as opposed to
bitmap font
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for prin ...
s. For users wanting to preview these typefaces on an electronic display, small versions of a font need extra
hints and
anti-aliasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording.
Specific topics in anti-aliasing include:
* Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used be ...
to look legible and attractive on screen. This often came in the form of an additional bitmap font of the same typeface, optimized for screen display. Otherwise, in order to preview the Type 1 fonts in typesetting applications, the
Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager (ATM) was the name of a family of computer programs created and marketed by Adobe Systems for use with their PostScript Type 1 fonts. The last release was Adobe ATM Light 4.1.2, per Adobe's FTP (at the time).
Modern operating ...
utility was required.
Font type
Type 0
Type 0 is a "composite" font format - as described in the PostScript Language Reference Manual, 2nd Edition. A composite font is composed of a high-level font that references multiple descendant fonts.
Type 1
Type 1 (also known as ''
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
'', ''PostScript Type 1'',
''PS1'',
''T1'' or ''Adobe Type 1'') is the font format for single-byte digital fonts for use with Adobe Type Manager software and with PostScript printers. It can support
font hinting
Font hinting (also known as instructing) is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible tex ...
.
It was originally a proprietary specification, but Adobe released the specification to third-party font manufacturers provided that all Type 1 fonts adhere to it.
Type 1 fonts are natively supported in Mac OS X, and in Windows 2000 and later via the GDI API. (They are not supported in the Windows GDI+, WPF or DirectWrite APIs.)
Adobe announced on 27 January 2021 that they would end support for Type 1 fonts in Adobe products after January 2023. Support for Type 1 fonts in
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...
was discontinued with the release of version 23.0 of the product in October 2021.
Type 2
Type 2 is a character string format that offers a compact representation of the character description procedures in an outline font file. The format is designed to be used with the Compact Font Format (CFF). The CFF/Type2 format is the basis for Type 1
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
fonts, and is used for embedding fonts in Acrobat 3.0 PDF files (PDF format version 1.2).
Type 3
Type 3 font (also known as ''PostScript Type 3'' or
''PS3'',
''T3'' or ''Adobe Type 3'') consists of glyphs defined using the full PostScript language, rather than just a subset. Because of this, a Type 3 font can do some things that Type 1 fonts cannot do, such as specify shading, color, and fill patterns. However, it does not support hinting. Adobe Type Manager did not support Type 3 fonts, and they are not supported as native WYSIWYG fonts on any version of Mac OS or Windows.
Type 4
Type 4 is a format that was used to make fonts for printer font cartridges and for permanent storage on a printer's hard disk. The character descriptions are expressed in the Type 1 format. Adobe does not document this proprietary format.
Type 5
Type 5 is similar to the Type 4 format but is used for fonts stored in the ROMs of a PostScript printer. It is also known as CROM font (Compressed ROM font).
Types 9, 10, 11
Ghostscript
Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, ...
referred them as
CID
CID may refer to:
Film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1955 film), an Indian Malayalam film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1956 film), an Indian Hindi film
* ''C. I. D.'' (1965 film), an Indian Telugu film
* ''C.I.D.'' (1990 film), an Indian Hindi film
Television
* ''CID'' ( ...
font types 0, 1, and 2 respectively, documented in Adobe supplements. Types 9, 10, and 11 are
CID-keyed fonts for storing Types 1, 3, and 42, respectively.
Type 14
Type 14, or the Chameleon font format, is used to represent a large number of fonts in a small amount of storage space such as printer ROM. The core set of Chameleon fonts consists of one Master Font, and a set of font descriptors that specify how the Master Font is to be adjusted to give the desired set of character shapes for a specific typeface.
Adobe does not document the Type 14 format. It was introduced with PostScript 3 in 1997, and de-emphasized in later years as storage became cheaper.
Type 32
Type 32 is used for downloading bitmap fonts to PostScript interpreters with version number 2016 or greater. The bitmap characters are transferred directly into the interpreter's font cache, thus saving space in the printer's memory.
Type 42
The Type 42 font format is a PostScript wrapper around a
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
font, allowing PostScript-capable printers containing a TrueType rasterizer (which was first implemented in PostScript interpreter version 2010 as an optional feature, later standard) to print TrueType fonts. Support for multibyte CJK TrueType fonts was added in PostScript version 2015. The out-of-sequence choice of the number 42 is said to be a jesting reference to ''
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
'', where 42 is the
Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognised and often used in ...
.
Core Font Set
In addition to font types, PostScript specifications also defined the Core Font Set, which dictates the minimum number of fonts, and character sets to be supported by each font.
PostScript Level 1
The original PostScript defined 13 font styles which form 4 type families:
*
Courier
A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
(Regular, Oblique, Bold, Bold Oblique)
*
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
(Regular, Oblique, Bold, Bold Oblique)
*
Times
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems.
Time or times may also refer to:
Temporal measurement
* Time in physics, defined by its measurement
* Time standard, civil time specific ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*
Symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
PostScript Level 2
PostScript Level 2 defined 35 font styles which form 10 type families. They include all of the above Level 1 fonts, ''plus'' the following:
*
ITC Avant Garde Gothic (Book, Book Oblique, Demi, Demi Oblique)
*
ITC Bookman (Light, Light Italic, Demi, Demi Italic)
*
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
(Condensed, Condensed Oblique, Condensed Bold, Condensed Bold Oblique, in addition to the 4 font styles in PostScript Level 1)
*New
Century Schoolbook
Century is a family of serif type faces particularly intended for body text. The family originates from a first design, Century Roman, cut by American Type Founders designer Linn Boyd Benton in 1894 for master printer Theodore Low De Vinne, for u ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*
Palatino
Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Named after the 16th-century Italian ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*ITC
Zapf Chancery
ITC Zapf Chancery is a family of script typefaces designed by the type designer Hermann Zapf and marketed by the International Typeface Corporation. It is one of the three typefaces designed by Zapf that are shipped with computers running Apple's ...
(Medium Italic)
*ITC
Zapf Dingbats
ITC Zapf Dingbats is one of the more common dingbat typefaces. It was designed by the typographer Hermann Zapf in 1978 and licensed by International Typeface Corporation.
History
In 1977, Zapf created about 1000 (or over 1200 according to Lino ...
Many computer operating systems have these fonts installed, while various projects have created clones of them. For instance, the
Ghostscript fonts
Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language file ...
(also known as the URW Base 35 fonts) are open source clones of all fonts defined in PostScript 2.
PostScript Level 3
In PostScript 3, 136 font styles are specified, which include the 35 font styles defined in PostScript 2, core fonts in popular operating systems (namely Windows 95, Windows NT, and Macintosh), selected fonts from Microsoft Office, and the HP 110 font set. New fonts include:
*
Albertus
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Later canonised as a Catholic saint, he was known during his li ...
(Light, Roman, Italic)
*
Antique Olive
Antique Olive is a humanist sans-serif typeface ("antique" being equivalent to sans-serif in French typographic conventions). Along the lines of Gill Sans, it was designed in the early 1960s by French typographer Roger Excoffon, an art director a ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Compact)
*Apple Chancery
*
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
(Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*
Bodoni
Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas o ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Poster, Poster Compressed)
*Carta (a dingbat)
*
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
*
Clarendon (Light, Roman, Bold)
*
Cooper Black
Cooper Black is an ultra-bold serif typeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. The typeface was drawn as an extra-bold weight of Cooper's "Coo ...
, Cooper Black Italic
*
Copperplate Gothic
Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy and released by American Type Founders (ATF) in 1901.
While termed a "''Gothic''" (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt ...
(32BC, 33BC)
*
Coronet
A coronet is a small crown consisting of ornaments fixed on a metal ring. A coronet differs from other kinds of crowns in that a coronet never has arches, and from a tiara in that a coronet completely encircles the head, while a tiara does ...
*
Eurostile
Eurostile is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese created Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin.
Novarese developed Eurostile to succeed the similar Microgramma, which ...
(Medium, Bold, Extended No.2, Bold Extended No.2)
*
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
*
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
(Light, Light Italic, Book, Book Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra Bold, Condensed, Condensed Bold)
*
Goudy (Oldstyle, Oldstyle Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra Bold)
*
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
(Narrow, Narrow Oblique, Narrow Bold, Narrow Bold Oblique)
*
Hoefler Text
Hoefler Text is an old-style serif font by Jonathan Hoefler and released by Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) in 1991 to showcase advanced type technologies. Intended as a versatile font that is suitable for body text, it takes cues from a r ...
(Roman, Italic, Black, Black Italic), Hoefler Ornaments
*
Joanna
Joanna is a feminine given name deriving from from he, יוֹחָנָה, translit=Yôḥānāh, lit=God is gracious. Variants in English include Joan (given name), Joan, Joann, Joanne (given name), Joanne, and Johanna. Other forms of the name in ...
(Roman/Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*
Letter Gothic
Letter Gothic is a monospaced sans-serif typeface. It was created between 1956 and 1962 by Roger Roberson for IBM in their Lexington, Kentucky, plant, and was inspired by the original drawings for Optima. It was initially intended to be used in ...
(Regular, Slanted, Bold, Bold Slanted)
*ITC Lubalin Graph (Book, Oblique, Demi, Demi Oblique)
*ITC Mona Lisa Recut
*Marigold
*
Monaco
Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...
*
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
*
Optima
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958.
Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtle swelling at the terminals suggesting a glyphic s ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*Oxford
*Stempel
Garamond
Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and b ...
(Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*Tekton (Regular)
*
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...
(Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic)
*
Univers
Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such a ...
(45 Light, 45 Light Oblique, 55, 55 Oblique, 65 Bold, 65 Bold Oblique, 57 Condensed, 57 Condensed Oblique, 67 Condensed Bold, 67 Condensed Bold Oblique, 53 Extended, 53 Extended Oblique, 63 Extended Bold, 63 Extended Bold Oblique)
*
Wingdings
Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Ce ...
Others
In PDF, 14 Type 1 fonts are defined as the standard fonts. They include the 13 font styles defined by PostScript Level 1, along with ITC Zapf Dingbats.
However, in recent versions of
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (former ...
, Helvetica and Times were internally replaced by Arial and Times New Roman respectively.
Character sets
Although PostScript fonts can contain any character set, there are character sets specifically developed by Adobe, which are used by fonts developed by Adobe.
Adobe Western 2
It includes a basic character set containing upper and lowercase letters, figures, accented characters, and punctuation. These fonts also contain currency symbols (cent, dollar, euro, florin, pound sterling, yen), standard ligatures (fi, fl), common fractions (1/4, 1/2, 3/4), common mathematics operators, superscript numerals (1,2,3), common delimiters and conjoiners, and other symbols (including daggers, trademark, registered trademark, copyright, paragraph, litre and estimated symbol). Compared to the ISO-Adobe character set, Western 2 also adds 17 additional symbol characters: euro, litre, estimated, omega, pi, partialdiff, delta, product, summation, radical, infinity, integral, approxequal, notequal, lessequal, greaterequal, and lozenge.
Fonts with an Adobe Western 2 character set support most western languages including Afrikaans, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Sami, Spanish, Swahili and Swedish.
This standard superseded ISO-Adobe as the new minimum character set standard as implemented in OpenType fonts from Adobe.
Adobe CE
Fonts with an Adobe CE character set also include the characters necessary to support the following central European languages: Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian and Turkish.
Adobe-GB1
This Simplified Chinese character collection provides support for the GB 1988–89, GB 2312–80, GB/T 12345–90, GB 13000.1-93, and GB 18030-2005 character set standards. Supported encodings include
ISO-2022
ISO/IEC 2022 ''Information technology—Character code structure and extension techniques'', is an ISO/ IEC standard (equivalent to the ECMA standard ECMA-35, the ANSI standard ANSI X3.41 and the Japanese Industrial Standard JIS X 0202) in the ...
,
EUC-CN
Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese.
The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an compliant coded chara ...
,
GBK, UCS-2, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, and the mixed one, two- and four-byte encoding as published in
GB 18030
GB 18030 is a Chinese government standard, described as ''Information Technology — Chinese coded character set'' and defines the required language and character support necessary for software in China. GB18030 is the registered Internet ...
-2005.
Adobe-CNS1
This Traditional Chinese character collection provides support for the
Big-5
Big-5 or Big5 is a Chinese character encoding method used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for traditional Chinese characters.
The People's Republic of China (PRC), which uses simplified Chinese characters, uses the GB 18030 character set inst ...
and
CNS 11643
The CNS 11643 character set (Chinese National Standard 11643), also officially known as the Chinese Standard Interchange Code or CSIC ( zh, tr=, t=中文標準交換碼), is officially the standard character set of Taiwan (Republic of China). In p ...
-1992 character set standards. It also includes support for a number of extensions to Big-5, which contain characters used mainly in the Hong Kong locale. Primary supported Big-5 extensions include
HKSCS
The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (; commonly abbreviated to HKSCS) is a set of Chinese characters – 4,702 in total in the initial release—used in Cantonese, as well as when writing the names of some places in Hong Kong (whether in w ...
.
Supported encodings include ISO-2022,
EUC-TW
Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese.
The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an compliant coded charac ...
, Big Five, UCS-2, UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32.
In Adobe-CNS1-7, 23 additional glyphs were added, with 25 additional mappings for its Unicode CMap resources.
Adobe-Japan1
It is a series of character sets developed for Japanese fonts. Adobe's latest, the Adobe-Japan1-6 set covers character sets from
JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. Th ...
,
ISO-2022-JP
ISO/IEC 2022 ''Information technology—Character code structure and extension techniques'', is an ISO/ IEC standard (equivalent to the ECMA standard ECMA-35, the ANSI standard ANSI X3.41 and the Japanese Industrial Standard JIS X 0202) in the ...
,
Microsoft Windows 3.1 J,
JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 (JIS2004) and 2012. As well as a ...
:2004,
JIS X 0212
JIS X 0212 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining a coded character set for encoding supplementary characters for use in Japanese. This standard is intended to supplement JIS X 0208 (Code page 952). It is numbered 953 or 5049 as an IBM code ...
-1990,
Kyodo News
is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 millio ...
U-PRESS character set.
Adobe-Japan2
It was originally as an implementation of JIS X 0212-1990 character set standard and the Macintosh extensions, but with the introduction of Adobe-Japan1 supplement 6 (Adobe-Japan1-6) standard, Adobe-Japan2-0 became obsolete.
Adobe-Korea1
This Korean character collection provides support for the
KS X 1001
KS X 1001, "''Code for Information Interchange (Hangul and Hanja)''", formerly called KS C 5601, is a South Korean coded character set standard to represent hangul and hanja characters on a computer.
KS X 1001 is encoded by the most common leg ...
:1992 and KS X 1003:1992 character set standards, and their selected corporate variations. Supported encodings include ISO-2022-KR,
EUC-KR
Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese.
The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an compliant coded char ...
, Johab,
UHC, UCS-2, UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32.
ISO-Adobe
Fonts with an ISO-Adobe character set support most western languages including: Afrikaans, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Sami, Spanish, Swahili and Swedish. This is the standard character set in most PostScript Type 1 fonts from Adobe.
File formats
CID
The CID-keyed font (also known as ''CID font'', ''CID-based font'', short for ''Character Identifier font'') is a font structure, originally developed for
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
font formats, designed to address a large number of
glyphs
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
. It was developed to support pictographic East Asian character sets, as these comprise many more characters than the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic writing systems.
Adobe developed CID-keyed font formats to solve problems with the OCF/Type 0 format, for addressing complex Asian-language (
CJK) encoding and very large character sets. CID-keyed internals can be used with the
Type 1 font format for standard CID-keyed fonts, or
Type 2 for CID-keyed
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
fonts.
CID-keyed fonts often reference "character collections," static glyph sets defined for different language coverage purposes. Although in principle any font maker may define character collections, Adobe's are the only ones in wide usage. Each character collection has an encoding which maps Character IDs to glyphs. Each member glyph in a character collection is identified by a unique character identifier (CID). Such CIDs are generally supplemental to other encodings or mappings such as
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
.
Character collections are uniquely named by registry, ordering and supplement, such as "Adobe-Japan1-6." The registry is the developer (such as Adobe). The so-called "ordering" gives the purpose of the collection (for example, "Japan1"). The supplement number (such as 6) indicates incremental additions: for a given language, there may be multiple character collections of increasing size, each a superset of the last, using a higher supplement number. The Adobe-Japan1-0 collection is 8284 glyphs, while Adobe-Japan1-6 is 23,058 glyphs.
CID-keyed fonts may be made without reference to a character collection by using an "identity" encoding, such as Identity-H (for horizontal writing) or Identity-V (for vertical). Such fonts may each have a unique character set, and in such cases the CID number of a glyph is not informative; generally the
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
encoding is used instead, potentially with supplemental information.
CID-keyed fonts internally have their character sets divided into "rows," with the advantage that each row may have different global
hinting
Font hinting (also known as instructing) is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible tex ...
parameters applied.
In theory it would be possible to make CID-keyed OpenType versions of western fonts. This would seem desirable for some such fonts because of the hinting advantages. However, according to Adobe, much of the software infrastructure (applications, drivers, operating systems) makes incorrect assumptions about CID-keyed fonts in ways that makes such fonts behave badly in real-world usage.
Adobe ClearScan technology (as from Acrobat 9 Pro) creates custom Type1-CID fonts to match the visual appearance of a scanned document after optical character recognition (OCR). ClearScan does not replace the fonts with system fonts or substitute them by Type1-MM (as in Acrobat 8 and earlier versions), but uses these newly created custom fonts. The custom fonts are embedded in the PDF file (this is mandatory). In Acrobat DC, it is no more called "ClearScan" but "Recognize Text - Editable Text & Images", and it is now possible to edit the text.
Compact Font Format
Compact Font Format (also known as CFF font format, Type 2 font format, or CFF/Type 2 font format) is a lossless compaction of the Type 1 format using Type 2 charstrings. It is designed to use less storage space than Type 1 fonts, by using operators with multiple arguments, various predefined default values, more efficient allotment of encoding values and shared subroutines within a FontSet (family of fonts).
The so-called PostScript or Type 1 flavor of
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
fonts, also called OpenType CFF, contains glyph outlines and hints in a CFF table.
CFF fonts can be embedded in
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
files, starting with PDF version 1.2. It is the usual approach to representing a Type 1 font within PDF.
CID-keyed fonts can be represented within CFF with Type 2 charstrings for CID-keyed OpenType fonts.
A Type 1 font can be losslessly converted into CFF/Type2 format and back.
Multiple Master
Multiple master fonts (or MM fonts) are an extension to
Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
'
Type 1 PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
s. Multiple master fonts contain one or more "masters" — that is, original font styles, e.g. a light, a regular and a bold version — and enable a user to interpolate these font styles along a continuous range of "axes." While Multiple Master fonts are not common in end user fonts anymore, they still play an important role when developing complex font families.
OpenType
PostScript glyph data can be embedded in OpenType font files, but OpenType fonts are not limited to using PostScript outlines. PostScript outlines in OpenType fonts are encoded in the Type2 Compact Font Format (CFF).
OpenType conversion
When Adobe converted PostScript Type 1 and Type 1 multiple master fonts to OpenType CFF format, they were made based on the last Type 1/MM versions from the Adobe Type Library fonts. In addition to file format change, there are other changes:
*All alphabetic fonts had 17 additional characters included: the euro (some had already gotten this in Type 1), litre, estimated, and the 14 Mac "symbol substitution" characters. Symbol substitution was a scheme used on Mac OS to deal with the fact that the standard "ISO-Adobe" character set omitted certain characters which were part of the MacRoman character set. When one of these 14 characters was typed in a Type 1 font with standard encoding, both ATM and the printer driver would get a generic glyph in the Times style from the Symbol font. In the OpenType conversion, these characters were built into every font, getting some degree of font-specific treatment (weight and width).
*Fonts that had unkerned accented characters had additional kerning to deal with accented characters.
*Font families that included separate Type 1 expert fonts or Cyrillic fonts have these glyphs built into the "base font" in their OpenType counterparts.
*Multiple master fonts were converted to individual OpenType fonts; each font consisting of a former Multiple Master instance.
For many
Adobe Originals
The Adobe Originals program is a series of digital typefaces created by Adobe Systems from 1989 for professional use, intended to be of extremely high design quality while offering a large feature set across many languages. Many are strongly influ ...
fonts, particularly those designed by
Robert Slimbach
Robert Joseph Slimbach is Principal Type Designer at Adobe, Inc., where he has worked since 1987. He has won many awards for his digital typeface designs, including the rarely awarded Prix Charles Peignot from the Association Typographique Inter ...
, Adobe did some degree of redesign along with the conversion to OpenType.
The typeface Helvetica Narrow was not converted to OpenType, because the Type 1 original was a mathematically squished version of Helvetica, rather than an actually designed condensed typeface. This was originally done to conserve ROM space in PostScript printers.
Type 1 ("PostScript") to OpenType font conversion
/ref>
As a result of the above changes, Adobe no longer guarantees metric compatibility between Type 1 and OpenType fonts. However, Adobe claims the change is minimal for Adobe (not Adobe Originals) fonts, if:
*Text is written in English
*The formatted text contains only non-accented characters
*Only characters that were present in the old fonts are used, without the former Symbol substitution characters
*Applications are used which base line spacing solely on point size or leading, and not on the bounding box of the font
Original Composite Font
Original Composite Font format (which uses a Type 0 file structure) was Adobe's first effort to implement a format for fonts with large character sets, debuted with PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
level 2.
Adobe then developed the CID-keyed font file format which was designed to offer better performance and a more flexible architecture for addressing the complex Asian-language encoding and character set issues. Adobe does not document or support OCF font format.
OCF font metrics are described in Adobe Composite Font Metrics file.
Adobe Font Metrics, Adobe Composite Font Metrics, Adobe Multiple Font Metrics
Adobe Font Metrics (AFM), Adobe Composite Font Metrics (ACFM), Adobe Multiple Font Metrics (AMFM) files contain general font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
information and font metrics information for the font program. These files are generally used directly only in Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
environments.
An AFM file provides both global metrics for a font program and the metrics of each individual character.
The metrics of a multiple master font are described by one AMFM file, which specifies the control data and global font information, plus one AFM file for each of the master designs in the font.
An ACFM file provides information about the structure of a composite font. Specifically, the global metrics of the composite font program and the global metrics of each of its immediately descendent font programs. ACFM file does not associate with a base font, but act as the top-level structure of a composite font. The character metrics of individual characters in the composite font are described completely by one of more associated AFM files.
The formats are sufficiently similar that a compliant parser can parse AFM, ACFM, and AMFM files.
Printer Font ASCII
Printer Font ASCII (PFA) is a pure ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
version of a Type 1 font program, containing in particular a font's glyph data. It is pure PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
code without any sort of wrapper, and can be copied in full into a PS file to define the font to the PS interpreter. PFA is the preferred format for Type 1 fonts used in UNIX environments, and usually carries a ".PFA" file name extension.
Though these files syntactically can contain arbitrary PostScript code, they usually follow a rather rigid formula in order to allow readers that are less than full PostScript interpreters to process them (for example to subset the font). The first section of the file is called the clear text
In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted.
Overview
With the advent of comp ...
portion, and begins constructing those data structures that define the font in the PostScript interpreter; the information here are things Adobe in the 1980s were comfortable having public, and much of it would be present also in the companion AFM file. The last two operators in the clear text portion are currentfile eexec
(encrypted exec), which instructs the interpreter to switch to reading the current file as an encrypted stream of instructions. The following encrypted portion is again PostScript code for finishing constructing the font data structures—a lot of it consists of charstrings, which is rather a kind of bytecode
Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (norma ...
, but at the font definition stage those are merely data stored in the font—even if that code is encrypted (which produces arbitrary byte values) and then hex-encoded to ensure the overall ASCII nature of the file. The data structures created here are marked noaccess
to make them inaccessible for subsequent PostScript code. The final action in the encrypted portion is to switch back to reading the file normally, but since eexec would read ahead a bit it was impossible to know at exactly which character normal processing would resume. Therefore, PFA files end with a trailer of 512 zeroes followed by a cleartomark
operator that throws away any operands that might have ended up on the stack as a result of interpreting those zeroes starting from a random position.
Printer Font Binary
Printer Font Binary (PFB) is a binary PostScript font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
format created by Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
, usually carrying ".PFB" file name extension. It contains a font's glyph data.
The PFB format is a lightweight wrapper to allow more compact storage of the data in a PFA file. The file consists of a number of blocks, each of which is marked as ASCII or binary. To recreate the corresponding PFA file, one takes the ASCII blocks verbatim and hex-encodes the binary blocks. The binary blocks are those which make up the encrypted portion of the font program.
LaserWriter Font
LaserWriter Font (LWFN) is a binary PostScript font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
format used on Classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...
, conceptually similar to the Printer Font Binary format but using the Mac OS resource fork The resource fork is a fork or section of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system, which was also carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility, used to store structured data along with the unstructured data stored within the data f ...
data structure rather than a custom wrapper for the font data. It contains the glyph data for one font.
LWFN
is the file type code The resource fork is a fork or section of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system, which was also carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility, used to store structured data along with the unstructured data stored within the data f ...
for this kind of file. It would not carry any extension, and the file name would be an abbreviation of the PostScript name of the font, according to a 5+3+3+... formula: the name is read as being in CamelCase
Camel case (sometimes stylized as camelCase or CamelCase, also known as camel caps or more formally as medial capitals) is the practice of writing phrases without spaces or punctuation. The format indicates the separation of words with a single ...
and split into subwords, up to 5 letters are kept from the first subword, and up to 3 letters of any subsequent subword. Palatino-BoldItalic would thus be found in the file PalatBolIta.
Printer Font Metric
Printer Font Metric (PFM) is a binary version of AFM, usually carrying ".PFM" file name extension. It contains font metric information.
The PFM format is documented in the Windows 3.1 "''Printers and Fonts Kit''" help file (PFK31WH.HLP). Some details are also covered in the Windows 3.1 "''Device Drivers Adaptation Guide''" help file (DDAG31WH.HLP). Both of those documents are part of the Windows 3.1 Device Development Kit (DDK), which is still available (October 2008) to MSDN subscribers.
.INF
.inf (INFormation) files contain application-specific information in plain ASCII text, such as font menu names for Windows and DOS-based applications. When a font is installed in Windows, the ATM Installer software takes the AFM and the INF file as input and generates the required PFM file at installation time. The AFM and INF files are not installed in the user's system.
.MMM
.MMM files are used for the metric data needed by multiple master fonts for the Windows environment.
.OFM
.OFM is the extension used by OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...
for its version of binary font metrics file, starting from version 2.1.
Support for Microsoft Windows
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
, Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...
, Windows NT 4
Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...
and Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...
do not support Type 1 fonts natively. Adobe Type Manager
Adobe Type Manager (ATM) was the name of a family of computer programs created and marketed by Adobe Systems for use with their PostScript Type 1 fonts. The last release was Adobe ATM Light 4.1.2, per Adobe's FTP (at the time).
Modern operating ...
is needed in order to use these fonts on these operating systems. Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...
, Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
and Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
support Type 1 fonts natively through GDI
GDI may refer to:
Science and technology
* Gasoline direct injection, a type of fuel injection
* Graphics Device Interface, a component of Microsoft Windows
* Guanosine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor, a protein
Organisations
* Gabriel Dumont I ...
calls. The Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem (similar to WinForms) originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initia ...
introduced in Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
, which is also available for Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
however drops support for Type 1 fonts, in favor of Type 2 fonts.
For Microsoft Windows platforms that natively support PostScript, only binary PostScript and OpenType file formats are supported.
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem (similar to WinForms) originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initia ...
(formerly codenamed Avalon) in Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
supports rasterizing OpenType CFF/Type 2 fonts, whereas Type 1 fonts will still be supported in GDI
GDI may refer to:
Science and technology
* Gasoline direct injection, a type of fuel injection
* Graphics Device Interface, a component of Microsoft Windows
* Guanosine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor, a protein
Organisations
* Gabriel Dumont I ...
, but not in GDI+.
PostScript font utilities
The
t1utils
font utility package by I. Lee Hetherington and Eddie Kohler
__NOTOC__
Eddie Kohler is a computer scientist specializing in Computer network, networks and operating systems. He is currently a professor of computer science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Prior to H ...
provides tools for decoding Type 1 fonts into a human-readable, and editable format (t1disasm), reassembling them back into fonts (t1asm), for converting between the ASCII and binary formats (t1ascii and t1binary), and for converting from Macintosh PostScript format to Adobe PostScript font format (unpost).
See also
*PostScript Standard Encoding The PostScript Standard Encoding (often spelled StandardEncoding, aliased as PostScript) is one of the character sets (or encoding vectors) used by Adobe Systems' PostScript (PS) since 1984 (1982). In 1995, IBM assigned code page 1276 (CCSID 1276 ...
*Computer font
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
*OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
*TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
*Page description language
In digital printing, a page description language (PDL) is a computer language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap (or generally raster graphics). An overlapping term is printer control la ...
References
External links
{{wikibooks, PostScript FAQ
Font format specifications
Adobe Type 1 Font Format (PDF: 445 KB)
Adobe Technical Note #5015: Type 1 Font Format Supplement (PDF: 225 KB)
Adobe Technical Note #5176: The CFF (Compact Font Format) Specification, (PDF: 251 KB)
Adobe Technical Note #5177: Type 2 Charstring Format (PDF: 212 KB)
Adobe Technical Note #5012: The Type 42 Font Format Specification
Adobe Technical Note #5014: Adobe CMap and CIDFont Files Specification
Adobe Technical Note #5004: Adobe Font Metrics (AFM) File Format Specification
General font information
Adobe CID fonts
Adobe Technical Note #5092: CID-Keyed Font Technology Overview
Adobe Technical Note #5178: Building PFM Files for PostScript-Language CJK Fonts
Adobe Technical Note #5641: Enabling PDF Font Embedding for CID-Keyed Fonts
Character set information
Adobe Latin Character Sets
Adobe Greek Character Sets
Adobe Cyrillic Character Sets
Adobe Technical Note #5078: Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection for CID-Keyed Fonts
Adobe Technical Note #5079: The Adobe-GB1-5 Character Collection
Adobe Technical Note #5080: The Adobe-CNS1-6 Character Collection
Adobe Technical Note #5093: The Adobe-Korea1-2 Character Collection
Adobe Technical Note #5094: Adobe CJKV Character Collections and CMaps for CID-Keyed Fonts
Adobe Technical Note #5097: Adobe-Japan2-0 Character Collection for CID-Keyed Fonts
Core font information
PostScript Type 1 fonts
Adobe Technical Note #5609: PostScript 3 Core Font Set Overview
The Adobe PostScript 3 Font Set
Miscellaneous
Fonts, Fonts, and more Fonts!
Font formats
Digital typography