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Diving down the rabbit hole of scripting InDesign to learn more about what fonts are in a file I ran across several font types but I'm unsure what it means in InDesign when you have a Type 1 font type. So if you have:

  • ATC
  • Bitmap
  • CID
  • OCF
  • OpenType CCF
  • OpentType CID
  • OpenType TT
  • Truetype

What would Type 1 represent?

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Type 1 is Adobe's old format. It was introduced in 1980's at the same time than the PostScript language. Type 1 fonts have Bezier curve outlines and utilize PostScript. Type 1 supports hinting.

Many people have a bunch of Type 1 fonts; me too! The same fonts are generally available as OTFs, but I can use them in Adobe's software. There exists plenty of popular software that totally ignore Type 1 fonts.

There exist a weird Type 1 expansion: Adobe Multiple Master - a font holds the information on how to with different parameter values give different versions to be used.

Adobe's Type Manager was the WinXP tool for installing Type 1 and Multiple Master fonts. Unfortunately later Windowses reject it's installation program. I have copied an installed Adobe Type Manager from my old WinXP machine. It runs ok. I have used it to Multiple Masters. The destination, where the generatd fonts are installed is not Windows\Fonts but the fonts folder in Adobe's installed software folder.

TransType and TypeTool can convert Type 1 fonts to more generally used formats.

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  • Multiple master fonts were a great idea, IIRC there is an effort to update the OpenType spec to allow something similar... ah yes, this: blog.typekit.com/2016/09/14/…
    – Cai
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 14:48
  • Type 1 on Windows was generally a .pfm suffiix (postscript font matrix), wasn't it? (Not a 'doze user)... So they may not have been user-identified as "Type 1" initially. The Mac always identifies them as Type 1 though.
    – Scott
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 20:04
  • @Scott PFM = Postscript Font Metrics = extra information of kerning, ligatures etc... for the software that can use it. PFB has the font shapes. These are for Windows. Linux versions of the same are AFM for metrics and PFA for the shapes. Mac takes the Linux attitude when using Type 1 fonts
    – user82991
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 20:37

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