How to install multiple master fonts on Windows 10?

[c0zzy]

Hey there,

I have downloaded some multiple master fonts from Internet. It seems only have .pfb and .mmm files for the font. How I can install the font on Windows 10? I googled a bit. It seems for one master font, it will need pfm and pfb for installation. Do I need pfm too for the multi-master font? if so why they don't share the pfm file inside the downloaded ZIP file? What tool I can use to generate a pfm file based on the pfb and mmm files?

I am new to Type 1 font on Windows. Thanks a lot!

Cozzy

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

Moved this question from the Adobe Reader Mobile community to Type & Typography since this question has nothing to do with Acrobat and/or mobile devices.

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To directly answer your question, Multiple Master Type 1 fonts cannot be installed nor are they supported on any recent version of Windows or for that matter MacOS. Multiple Master Type 1 fonts haven't been licensed by Adobe for over twenty years and as far as I know, no other font foundry has licensed them since then either.

Furthermore, no Adobe application other than Acrobat supports Multiple Master fonts at all. (In the case of Acrobat, there is support for existing PDF files that reference and have embedded Multiple Master fonts. These fonts are also used for substitutions for non-embedded fonts in some limited cases!) 

Adobe's Multiple Master Type 1 fonts were succeeded by OpenType CFF font families containing multiple typefaces, each representing one of the fixed instances of the original Multiple Master versions.

You mentioned a “downloaded ZIP file” with the Multiple Master font you are trying to install. Since Adobe was the primary source of Multiple Master fonts in the day, so to speak, and we know of no “open source” or “shareware” Multiple Master fonts either from then or especially now, it is very likely that you downloaded something illegally posted. If you can provide the font name, we can confirm that for you!  😀

[Anita Bonita]

Not necessarily, Dov. I'm just now configuring a new computer, running Windows 10, to replace my vintage 2006 XP machine. And I assure you, my Multiple Master Fonts (Tekton, Nueva, and ITC Garamond) were purchased directly from Adobe on physical media. Looks like I'm going to have to keep that old machine around if I want to open any file using those typefaces -- although it would be nice if Adobe could provide us with enough static fonts to cover.

[c0zzy]

Thanks a lot for the quick feedbak, Dov!

If Windows doesn't support mmm file type. Why would they give the file extension support in addFontResourceA api:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wingdi/nf-wingdi-addfontresourcea 

It that page it clearly say, 

.mmm	Multiple master Type1 font resource file. It must be used with .pfm and .pfb files.

[Dov Isaacs]

Because that document is way out of date.

[c0zzy]

Thanks Dov,

I have another question. It seems the PFB file has ascii portion and the binary portion. It mentioned in the Adobe official document about the ASCII format. However, I can't see how the binary portion is organized. Do you have any link which can help me to inspect the binary portion?

Thanks a lot!

[Dov Isaacs]

You can find all sorts of technical documents associated with fonts at https://www.adobe.com/devnet/font.html .

Enjoy!  🙂