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Basic terminology

2 Basic terminology

There are many different font formats and associated font file suffixes. A few that will be addressed here are:

.pfa, .pfb

Postscript type 1 fonts. The .pfa is the Ascii form and .pfb the Binary form.

.afm

The font metrics associated with a type 1 font.

.pfm

The printer font metrics associated with a type 1 font.

.ttf

A TrueType font

.fot

An indirect reference to a TrueType font (not an actual font)

.fon, .fnt

Bitmapped screen fonts

The .fot file is used by Windows as sort of a symbolic link to the actual TrueType font (.ttf) file. The .fon font files are also used by Windows. I know of no way to use this font format with FreeBSD.

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