User Guide
FontLab 4
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E x p o r t i ng an d P r i nt i ng
You know how to open fonts, how to rearrange characters and change
encodings and how to save fonts in FontLab format to keep your changes.
Now it’s time to learn how to generate fonts in formats that other programs
can understand.
Please note that you cannot export fonts with more than 6,400 glyphs. If
you try to export a bigger font you will see a warning message that will
recommend that you split the font into smaller parts.
If you want to work with bigger fonts consider using our AsiaFont Studio
product. More information about it is available at this web page:
http://www.fontlab.com/html/asiafontstudio.html
Font Formats
FontLab can work with four font formats and their variations:
Type 1 and
Multiple
Master
Sometimes fonts in this format are called PostScript fonts. Usually
they consist of two or three files: a file with the .pfb extension and one
or two additional files needed by the OS to get information about the
font header and font metrics. You need Adobe Type Manager to use
these fonts on Windows (if you are not using Windows 2000 or
Windows XP).
TrueType The standard format for Windows fonts since version 3.1 and for the
Mac OS. The font is stored in a single file that has a .ttf extension.
TrueType-based OpenType fonts have the same structure but some
additional information. From FontLab’s point of view, there is
minimal difference between “plain” TrueType fonts and TrueType-
based OpenType fonts.
OpenType A relatively new font format jointly supported by Microsoft and
Adobe. Files can have either a .ttf or .otf extension. Windows 2000 and
Windows XP directly support these fonts but the .otf version of the
format requires Adobe Type Manager on Windows 9x and ME.
OpenType fonts may be TrueType-based (which we will call TrueType
fonts unless specially noted) or PostScript-based. The latter are also
called CFF-based or CFF-flavored. CFF is a Compact Font format
designed and supported by Adobe. Think of it as an improved and
more compact version of Type 1.
FontLab
This is FontLab’s own font format that potentially can contain a
superset of information that you can export to other formats. You
already know how to open and save FontLab fonts.