Support for .fon format

[davidross]

I'm evaluating an unregistered version of FontCreator so I can't tell if it's possible to save (a .ttf file) as a .fon file. Can someone tell me if that's supported? Also, is it possible to open .fon files?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

No. FontCreator is for editing *.ttf or *.otf fonts.

[Dave Crosby]

.fon support was dropped some time ago (after Windows 3.1?) along with many other attempted font formats.
There is a little history here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_font

Bitmap font formats
* Portable Compiled Format (PCF)
* Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF)
* Server Normal Format (SNF)
* DECWindows Font (DWF)
* Sun X11/NeWS format (BF, AFM)
* Microsoft Windows bitmapped font (FON)
* Amiga Font, ColorFont, AnimFont
* ByteMap Font (BMF)
* PC Screen Font (PSF)

More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType

Microsoft

By 1991 Microsoft added TrueType into the Windows 3.1 operating system. In partnership with their contractors, Monotype Corporation, Microsoft spent much effort creating a set of high quality TrueType fonts that were compatible with the core fonts being bundled with PostScript equipment at the time. This included the fonts that are standard with Windows to this day: Times New Roman (compatible with Times Roman), Arial (compatible with Helvetica) and Courier New (compatible with Courier). One should understand "compatible" to mean two things: first, that the fonts are similar to look at, and second, very importantly, the fonts have the same character widths so can be used to typeset the same documents without reflowing the text. (The disjunction of the names, particularly between Arial and Helvetica, led some to believe there was a general problem of having to determine an "equivalent" Apple or PostScript font whenever a particular Windows font was called for, or vice versa. However, while the character outlines themselves are different, the styles and weights have been made similar enough that the average user is unable to tell the fonts apart.)

Microsoft and Monotype technicians used TrueType's hinting technology to ensure that these fonts did not suffer from the problem of illegibility at low resolutions which had previously forced the use of bitmapped fonts for screen display. Subsequent advances in technology have introduced first anti-aliasing, which smooths the edges of fonts at the expense of a slight blurring, and more recently subpixel rendering (the Microsoft implementation goes by the name ClearType), which exploits the pixel structure of TFT LCD based displays to increase the apparent resolution of text. Microsoft has marketed these technologies particularly heavily, and they are now widely used on all platforms.

Microsoft also developed a "smart font" technology, named TrueType Open in 1994, later renamed to OpenType in 1996 when it merged support of the Adobe Type 1 glyph outlines.