Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!samalone
From: samalone@athena.mit.edu (Stuart A. Malone)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Universal font standard
Message-ID: <4403@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 6 Apr 88 21:11:29 GMT
References: <3178@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: samalone@athena.mit.edu (Stuart A. Malone)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 23
Keywords: common
Summary: Adobe might have one.


The closest thing I've seen to a universal font standard is Adobe's Character
Bitmap Distribution Format, which they use to distribute bitmap fonts.  X
Windows version 11 is also using this format to distribute the fonts that come
with X.

CBDF files are plain ASCII files -- no meta or control characters -- so you can
move them around pretty easily.  The format can handle variable width and
variable height characters, kerning, and leading.  It also allows you to attach
"properties" to a font, which allows you to extend the format to include
machine-specific font information.  (X Windows uses this to encode hints to
programs using the font, like: how many pixels below the baseline should
underlines go and how thick should they be?)  All-in-all, it's a pretty
reasonable format, and would be quite appropriate for distributing fonts on the
net.

I have a copy of the CBDF specs (version 2.1) in postscript format.  (It
includes explanatory pictures, so it's hard to distribute in human-readable
ASCII form.)  However, the document is copyrighted by Adobe, so I don't think
I'm free to distribute it without their permission.  (Would anyone from Adobe
care to grant permission?)

				--Stuart A. Malone