User Guide

Multiple Master Fonts
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Mu lt iple Mast er Fo nt s
With FontLab you can make a special type of font called a Multiple Master
font. Multiple Master fonts contain several font styles, called master fonts,
in one font file. A program that uses a Multiple Master font can select not
only one of the master fonts, but also any intermediate style created by
interpolation of the master fonts. So it can use not only Bold, Normal,
Narrow or Wide styles, but any style in between, such as 30% Weight and
47% Width. We will discuss this process in full detail in the next sections.
The Multiple Master font format is an extension of the Type 1 font format.
This means that Multiple Master fonts (or MM fonts, for short) are
compatible with all PostScript printers. MM fonts can be used on Windows
or Macintosh computers with the help of Adobe Type Manager (ATM)
versions 3.0 or later.
For technical details and an excellent background in this subject we
strongly recommend you read “Designing Multiple Master Typefaces”, a
book published electronically by Adobe Systems.
It is available at:
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/pdfs/tn/5091.Design_MM_Fonts.pdf