Fonts & Encodings

Appendix C. PostScript Font Formats

Since its appearance in 1985, the year in which the first laser printer (the Apple LaserWriter) came onto the market, the PostScript language has conquered the computer world, in everything from the industrial production of printed material to office management and the personal printing of documents. In this chapter, we shall describe the various PostScript font formats: Type 1, of course, but also Type 3, Type 42, Type 0, CID, Multiple Master, and the very recent CFF/Type 2.

Before beginning to describe these font formats, we shall start with a brief introduction to the PostScript language—an introduction that is essential for understanding the syntax of the language used in fonts as well as the nature of the objects being manipulated. This introduction has no pretensions to thoroughness; after all, the specification of the PostScript language [24] contains no fewer than 912 pages, and very dense ones at that! Instead, our goal will be merely to give the basic information that is needed in order to understand what follows. The reader eager to obtain more information on the PostScript language may consult three books by Adobe (the red [24], blue [22], and green [20] books); there are also many introductory books [303, 318, 250], and some works focused on the PostScript capabilities of certain printers, such as the LaserWriter [52, 182].