Font Formats

This is pretty basic stuff but just recording here the different types of font formats.

  • .otf - opentype font, designed by microsoft and adobe to be cross platform.
  • .ttf - truetype font, it’s actually an opentype font, just the same, but .ttf have quadratic curves and are stored in the <glyf> table in the font, where .otf have cubic (postscript) curves which are stored in the <cff> table. .ttf may look somewhat better on Windows but overall the difference is quite minimal.
  • .woff & .woff2 - compressed versions of .ttf or .otf fonts for the web; both types of curves may be contained therein but this of little importance.
  • .fea - refers to a Feature File used in the OpenType Font development process. The .fea file is written in the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO) syntax and is used to define OpenType layout features such as ligatures, kerning, alternate glyph substitutions, and other advanced typographic behaviors.
  • .ufo - Unified Font Object, a file format is an open, human-readable, and cross-platform format used for storing font source data.
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