Loading Type‑1 (PostScript) fonts | .NET

Loading Type‑1 fonts with Aspose.Font for .NET

Why Type‑1 fonts?

• Type‑1 (PostScript) fonts – .pfb (binary) and .pfa (ASCII) – are still used in many legacy publishing and CAD workflows.
• Aspose.Font can read, analyse, render and convert these fonts without any external dependencies, making it ideal for server‑side processing and document generation.

What you need

Item	Minimum version
.NET Framework	4.6 (or .NET Core 2.x / .NET 5+)
Aspose.Font for .NET	23.12 or later
License	A valid .lic file (optional for trial – otherwise a 30‑day evaluation works).

Add the NuGet package to your project:

dotnet add package Aspose.Font

Core API Concepts

Class / Enum	Purpose
FontDefinition	Describes what kind of font you want to open (FontType.Type1).
FontFileDefinition	Describes where the font lives – file system (FileSystemStreamSource), memory (ByteContentStreamSource), or any custom stream source.
FontType	Enum that tells Aspose what format to expect (CFF, TTF, Type1, …).
Aspose.Font.Font.Open(fd)	Static method that reads the definition and returns an IFont implementation (Type1Font).
Type1Font	Concrete class exposing glyphs, metrics, encoding, and rendering capabilities for Type‑1 fonts.

Loading a Type‑1 font from disk

using System;
using System.IO;
using Aspose.Font;
using Aspose.Font.Sources;

// Path to the .pfb or .pfa file
string fileName = @"C:\Fonts\courier.pfb";   // change to your file

// Ensure the file exists
if (!File.Exists(fileName))
    throw new FileNotFoundException($"Font file not found: {fileName}");

// Build a FontDefinition that tells Aspose we are dealing with a Type‑1 font.
FontDefinition fd = new FontDefinition(
    FontType.Type1,                                 // format hint
    new FontFileDefinition(
        "pfb",                                      // extension hint (pfb or pfa)
        new FileSystemStreamSource(fileName)));    // reads directly from the file system

// Load it
Type1Font font = Aspose.Font.Font.Open(fd) as Type1Font;

// Verify that the font really loaded
if (font == null)
    throw new InvalidOperationException("Unable to load the Type‑1 font.");

Loading Type-1 from memory

byte[] fontBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(fileName);
FontDefinition fd = new FontDefinition(
    FontType.Type1,
    new FontFileDefinition("pfb", new ByteContentStreamSource(fontBytes)));
Type1Font font = Aspose.Font.Font.Open(fd) as Type1Font;

Tip: The "pfb" string is only a hint. Use "pfa" for ASCII‑encoded Type‑1 files.

Conclusion

• Aspose.Font makes loading and working with legacy Type‑1 fonts straightforward: define the source (FileSystemStreamSource, ByteContentStreamSource, …), open via Aspose.Font.Font.Open, and you instantly gain access to metrics, encoding tables, and powerful rendering APIs.
• The same pattern applies to CFF and TrueType/OpenType fonts—simply change FontType.Type1 to the appropriate enum value.