Font technical notes

This page offers an index of technical font documentation. This is mainly a way to preserve legacy technical documentation for certain Adobe technologies. It is meant to be used as a historical reference. There is no technical support provided and no guarantee of future availability.

Please refer to the licensing terms for information about copying and redistribution.

Note: For technical notes about Adobe® Acrobat® and Adobe PDF font topics, such as ToUnicode tables and Widths-only fonts, see Advanced Acrobat/PDF technical documentation.

Documentation is available in the following areas:

Specifications

• Adobe Font Metrics File Format Specification #5004 (PDF, 238k) Version 4.1 10/9/97
• Adobe Type 1 Font Format (PDF, 459k) Version 1.1 02/93
• Type 1 Font Format Supplement #5015 (PDF, 225k) (supersedes #5047 and #5086) 5/15/94
• Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) Specification #5005 (PDF, 84k) Version 2.2 3/31/92
• Adobe Binary Screen Font Files Specification #5006 (PDF, 41k) Version 2.0 3/31/92
• The Type 42 Font Format Specification #5012 (PDF, 159k) 7/31/98
• Adobe Standard Cyrillic Font Specification #5013 (PDF, 336k) 2/18/98
• Sonata® Font Design Specification #5045 (PDF, 40k) 3/31/92
• The Compact Font Format Specification #5176 (PDF, 510k) 12/04/03
• The Type 2 Charstring Format #5177 (PDF, 194k) 3/16/00
• CID-Keyed sfnt Font File Format for the Macintosh, version 2.0 #5180 (PDF, 166k) 2/12/97
• PostScript Name Generation for Fonts Using OpenType Font Variations #5902 (pdf, 158k) 9/14/2016

General font issues

• Macintosh FOND Resources #0091 (PDF, 106k) 3/31/92
• Supporting Downloadable PostScript® Language Fonts #5040 (PDF, 87k) 3/31/92
• The StemSnap Hint Operator for Type 1 Font Programs #5049 (PDF, 32k) 3/31/92
• Supporting Fonts in the PostScript Language Environment #5075 (PDF, 125k) 3/31/92
• Font Naming Issues #5088 (PDF, 182k)
• Glyph Naming #5098 12/17/98 Superseded - see Adobe Glyph List Specification
• Adobe Font Name Reference Table #5090 (PDF, 469k) 1/29/98
• Designing Multiple Master Typefaces #5091 (PDF, 3.3M) 9/7/95
• Bar Code Font Vendor List #5096 (PDF, 27k) 9/25/98
• PostScript 3 Core Font Set Overview #5609 (PDF, 30k) 10/9/97
• Font Embedding Guidelines (PDF, 262k)

CJK/CID-keyed fonts

• CMap Resources open source project on GitHub
• Adobe CJKV Character Collections and CMaps for CID-Keyed Fonts #5094 (deprecated and superseded by the CMap Resources open source project on GitHub)
• The Adobe-Japan1-6 Character Collection on GitHub
• The Adobe-Japan2-0 Character Collection on GitHub (deprecated and superseded by Adobe-Japan1-6)
• The Adobe-KR-9 Character Collection on GitHub
• The Adobe-Korea1-2 Character Collection on GitHub (deprecated and superseded by Adobe-KR-9)
• The Adobe-GB1-5 Character Collection on GitHub
• The Adobe-CNS1-7 Character Collection on GitHub
• Adobe CMap and CID Font Files Specification #5014 (PDF, 530k) 10/08/96 Version 1.0
• CID-Keyed Font Technology Overview #5092 (PDF, 2MB) 9/12/94
• Developing CMap Resources for CID-Keyed Fonts #5099 (PDF, 275k) 3/15/12
• CID-Keyed Font Installation for PostScript File Systems #5174 (PDF, 37k) 8/96
• CID-Keyed Font Installation for ATM Software #5175 (PDF, 61k) 3/18/98
• Building JIS2004-Savvy OpenType Fonts (TAR, 3MB) 10/31/07
• OpenType-CID/CFF CJK Fonts: 'name' Table Tutorial #5149 (PDF, 156k) 08/05/2010
• AFDKO Version 2.0 Tutorial: mergeFonts, rotateFont & autohint #5900 (PDF, 760k) 02/21/2007
• Special-Purpose OpenType Japanese Font Tutorial: Kazuraki #5901 (PDF, 2.9M) 05/10/2010

CMaps for PDF CJK Fonts

These resources are now managed at the GitHub project site Mapping Resources for PDF