3.5 Font naming

Naming font files has always been a difficult proposition at best. On the one hand, the names should be as portable as possible, so the fonts themselves can be used on almost any platform. On the other hand, the names should be as descriptive and comprehensive as possible. The best compromise we have been able to work out is described in a separate document: section `Introduction' in Filenames for TeX fonts. See section 2.2.1 Archives, for where to obtain.

Filenames for GNU project fonts should start with `g', for the "source" abbreviation of "GNU".

Aside from a general font naming scheme, when developing fonts you must keep the different versions straight. We do this by appending a "version letter" `a', `b', ... to the main bitmap filename. For example, the original Garamond roman font we scanned was a 30 point size, so the main filename was `ggmr30' (`g' for GNU, `gm' for Garamond, `r' for roman). As we ran the font through the various programs, we named the output `ggmr30b', `ggmr30c', and so on.

Since the outline fonts produced by BZRto are scalable, we do not include the design size in their names. (BZRto removes a trailing number from the input name by default.)