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    Basic  
 
  Font Basics - Part 6
Variations of PC Type 1 Fonts

Although PC Type 1 fonts use a .PFB and a .PFM file (see here), there are a few other Type 1 font file types you may encounter. A good online reference from Adobe® on Type 1 font files can be found here.

File Type
Description
.PFB Printer Font Binary - Font outlines in binary format
.PFM Printer Font Metrics - Font metrics in binary format
.AFM Adobe Font Metrics - Font metrics in ASCII format
.INF INFormation File - Font information used by Windows®
.PFA Printer Font ASCII - Font outlines in ASCII format

Examples of How To Use These Files

In most situations, you will only encounter .PFB and .PFM files when installing Type 1 fonts in Windows. But here are a few facts you may not know and which may be useful:

If you don't have a .PFM file, but have a .PFB file along with an .AFM and an .INF file, you can still install the font. ATM® will make a .PFM file from the .AFM and .INF files at installation time.

If you don't have a .PFB file, you can make one from a .PFA file with CrossFont (see here). CrossFont is a very handy utility. Its primary purpose is for porting Mac® and PC fonts between platforms, but it is also very useful for PC Type 1 fonts. Following is a screen shot of how to make a .PFB file from a .PFA file on the PC:

If you don't have a .PFM, .AFM or .INF file, but you do have a .PFB file, you can make a new one with CrossFont. It may occur that you will find a .PFM file with bad font bounding boxes. You can use this technique to make a new a .PFM file in this situation. Following is a screen shot of how to make a .PFM file from a .PFB file:

  Note: There is no substitute for a good .PFM file from the font foundry. It contains important data about the font. In the above example all the kerning information that may be present in the original .PFM file would be mising from the generated one.
 
 

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