Filenames for fonts

We must limit ourselves to eight character names, for compatibility with DOS filesystems and the ISO 9660 standard used for CD-ROM distribution. Names may consist of only the letters (monocase a-z), numerals (0-9), and underscore.

Here is the basic division of the eight characters (the spaces here are merely for readability):

 S TT W [V...] [N] [E] [DD]

where

S

represents the supplier of the font.

TT

represents the typeface name.

W

represents the weight.

V...

represents the variant(s), and is omitted if both it and the width are normal. Many fonts have more than one variant.

N

represents the encoding, and is omitted if the encoding is nonstandard. Encodings are subsumed in the section on variants (see section Variants).

E

represents the width ("expansion"), and is omitted if it is normal.

DD

represents the design size (in decimal), and is omitted if the font is linearly scaled. Mittelbach in TUGboat 13(1) proposes using hexadecimal or base-36 notation. I don't think the increased range makes up for the unreadability of the common sizes (e.g., 10pt fonts would have a suffix `a' (in hex), or `j' (in base 36)).

The weight, variants, and width are probably all best taken from the original name of the font, instead of trying to relate them to some external standard.

• Suppliers
• Typefaces
• Weights
• Variants
• Widths

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