[PLUG] Mapping Type 1 file names to font names

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Thu Jun 9 21:29:03 UTC 2011


On Thu, 9 Jun 2011 11:22:13 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

>In /usr/share/fonts/Type1/ is a list of Adobe file names. I would like to
>associate each file name with a font name but I've not used a Goggle
>search term that works. If someone knows how to word the search term
>to find this information please share your knowledge with me.

I can't help with the googling, but I do know a few things about Adobe
font naming. I mean, the old Type 1 fonts, which adhered to an 8.3
format; the new OTF fonts use a real filename so there is little
difficulty in figuring out what the font is from the filename.

The following examples will give the gist of how the system works:

	awbi____.pfb	Adobe Caslon Bold Italic
	tibi____.pfb	Tmes Bold Italic
	tir_____.pfb	Times Roman
	gay_____.pfb	Garamond Expert Regular
	hvbo____.pfb	Helvetica Bold Oblique
	zd______.pfb	Zapf Dingbats

First, underscores are used to make each filename a full eight
characters plus a three character extension. Each filename begins with
a two- or three-letter abbreviation for the face.

Note that "i" and "o" are used for "italic" and "oblique" respectively,
which are not the same thing, although both are slanted.

Similarly, "r" is used for "roman," but if the ordinary version of the
face is called "regular," there is no letter. E.g., the abbreviations
for the full set of four fonts for Adobe Caslon are aw, awi, awb, awbi.

The "y" indicates an expert set. 

At one time I had a paper document from Adobe explaining the system in
detail, but the document now lives in the sea of lost data. All that
remains are the parts that are still in my own memory.

Most important: Install Fontmatrix. (In the repos for most distros.)
The first tme you run Fontmatrix it will go out and find all the fonts
installed on your computer. Then, for each font, it will display the
name of the font, a graphical view of the glyphs, and the filename,
complete with path. It also has many other utilities and functions. 



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