Download Free Fonts. Collection of most popular free to download fonts for Windows and Mac. This free fonts collection also offers useful content and a huge collection of TrueType face and OpenType font families categorized in alphabetical order. Less-common serif fonts. Georgia is a web-optimized serif font, but is still a newcomer. Palatino is as old and established as Times is, but looks terrible on recent Unix systems. Century Schoolbook, Garamond, and Bookman seem to be available on Unix systems, but I am not sure how widespread they are on Windows/Mac systems.
A font (as it applies to computers) is a file or set of files that contain all of the necessary glyphs and positioning information for displaying a particular typeface on a computer display or output device such as a printer. What is a font family? A font family is a collection of typefaces; typically they are variations on the same typeface. The Times font family usually consists of a regular face (Times Roman), a bold face (Times Bold), an italic face (Times Italic), and a bold italic face (Times Bold Italic); some font families have many different typefaces and variants.
What is a PostScript Type 1 font? PostScript is a page-description language that is used to generate images of a formatted page to be sent to an output device.
PostScript Type 1 fonts are files that use PostScript to describe the appearance of a typeface; each font requires two files -- a bitmapped or screen font, and an outline font that is used by a PostScript interpreter to generate the final output. On the Mac OS, a PostScript Type 1 font requires two files; a 'font suitcase' of screen fonts, and an PostScript outline font for each screen font in a font suitcase. On Windows, a PostScript Type 1 font is represented by a.pfm file which contains the font metric data, and a.pfb file which contains the data for the characters or glyphs. What is a Multiple Master font? Multiple Master fonts are a variation of PostScript Type 1 font; each Multiple Master outline font file contains more than one set of outlines for a typeface, which could be modified on-the-fly to generate variations of a typeface. Multiple Master fonts require a custom utility that could generate one or more instances, which represent a particular configuration of the font.
On the Mac OS, a Multiple Master font is indistinguishable from standard PostScript fonts. On Windows, a Multiple Master font is represented by a.pfm file, a.pfb file, and an.mmm file which contains the data for generating instances for a Multiple Master font. Generating new Multiple Master instances is no longer supported by Mac OS X or Windows, and aspects of the Multiple Master technology have been incorporated into the OpenType font format. What is a TrueType font? TrueType fonts are based on an outline font standard developed by Microsoft and Apple as a competitor to PostScript fonts. A TrueType font only requires a single font file to generate both on-screen type and type to be sent to an output device; TrueType fonts are also cross-platform, and can be used on both Mac OS and Windows.