Re: How to retrieve the font information from TrueType font file?
Re: How to retrieve the font information from TrueType font file?
- Subject: Re: How to retrieve the font information from TrueType font file?
- From: Mike Wright <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:09:02 -0400
On Oct 17, 2009, at 02:37 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:
On Oct 16, 2009, at 10:31 PM, Mike Wright wrote:
1. Single Fonts with the ".ttf" file extension have only a data
fork, and the name of the file seems to be the name of the font.
Not necessarily. The filename is not part of the font, so it can be
arbitrary, and a lot of the time it's not the same as the font name.
b. The other style has a resource fork that includes a 'FOND'
resource for each individual font, with the 'FOND' resource names
being the names of the fonts. They also include 'sfnt' resources,
but the 'sfnt' resources do not have names. (They just have
resource IDs that match the resource IDs of the corresponding
'FOND' resources.)
I don't know if the FOND resource is even used anymore. (That's all
legacy stuff dating back to about 1986.) The actual font name is in
the TrueType font tables making up the 'sfnt' resources.
There are a number of other formats you didn't list, like .otf, .ttc
and .dfnt. I think it's still possible to have raw Type 1 PostScript
fonts installed, although I don't know what the filetype for those
would be. (They used to be files with HFS type 'LWFN'.)
You really, really don't want to mess with this stuff directly,
unless you'd like to spend months learning all about the intricacies
of font formats.
—Jens
I certainly wouldn't want to. I spent much of the period 1988-1995
writing DOS-based and Mac-based C software to convert various Mac
PostScript, TrueType, and bitmapped screen font files to Windows 1.0
and later formats, and it was frustrating and terrifying, being my
first programming job right out of junior college (at the age of 45,
after a career as a translator in the US Army). You probably couldn't
pay me enough to do that these days. Still, I managed to convert the
CasadyWare (later Casady & Greene) Fluent Laser Fonts library at a
time when Fontographer ran only on the Mac, and the fonts had to be
essentially hand-installed on Windows.
As I mentioned in my original post, I was able to examine only the
third-party fonts that I have on my current system (140 "Font
Suitcase" files, with and without the .suit extension, and 8 "Windows
TrueType font" files, with the .ttf extension). (And, isn't it amazing
that the 2002 version -- the last as far as I know -- of Resorcerer
still runs under Snow Leopard about as well as it ever did under
Panther.)
If the publisher of the software doesn't have any control over the
kinds of font files that they bundle with their own software,
including the file names, then the plist option is certainly the most
reliable.
FYI, I haven't found any of the "Font Suitcase" files that have a data
fork. The font is in the 'FOND' resource -- and all of those fonts
work fine under Snow Leopard. Some of this legacy stuff is probably
pretty hard to eliminate without nasty repercussions.
--Mike Wright
http://www.idata3.com/
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