PFA
PFA — Printer Font ASCII
PFA (Printer Font ASCII) is a legacy Adobe Type 1 PostScript font format. The .pfa file is a plain-text representation of a PostScript font program — every byte is human-readable ASCII, which made the format portable across operating systems and easy to inspect with any text editor. PFA dates to the early days of desktop publishing and is rarely seen on the web today, but it still turns up in print shops, legacy CAD pipelines, and Unix typesetting workflows.History
Adobe published the PostScript Type 1 font specification in 1984 alongside the original Apple LaserWriter. The Type 1 format defined glyph outlines as cubic Bézier curves with sophisticated hinting instructions — the same technology that would later inspire the OpenType cubic flavour. Adobe kept the encrypted internals of Type 1 closed until 1990, when the company published the full Black Book specification in response to the pressure from TrueType. PFA is one of two container formats for Type 1: ASCII text for portability, and PFB for compact binary. PFA dominated Unix and PostScript-printer environments while PFB ruled Windows and macOS. With the OpenType handover in the late 1990s both PFA and PFB began a slow retreat, but they remain in active use anywhere PostScript-native print pipelines still operate. Some font designers also prefer the .pfa container for diffing and version-control workflows because it is plain text — a binary .pfb file is opaque to git, but a .pfa file is just bytes you can grep.When to use PFA
- Unix and Linux typesetting workflows using groff, troff, or TeX
- Legacy PostScript print pipelines and high-end commercial print
- Archiving Type 1 font libraries from the 1990s and early 2000s
- Round-tripping Type 1 fonts through font editors that prefer ASCII
Convert PFA to other formats
Convert other formats to PFA
Frequently asked questions
Is PFA still used in 2026?
Yes, in narrow professional niches. Commercial print shops with PostScript-native RIPs still consume PFA files directly, and Unix typesetting systems built on TeX or groff often expect Type 1 fonts. Outside print, PFA is essentially extinct.
What is the difference between PFA and PFB?
Both are containers for the same underlying Adobe Type 1 font program. PFA stores it as plain ASCII text — portable, larger on disk, easy to read with any editor. PFB stores it as compact binary — smaller, but harder to inspect. The font itself is identical.
Can I convert PFA to WOFF2?
Yes. Our converter parses the PFA Type 1 program, rebuilds the glyph outlines as cubic Béziers in an OpenType container, and wraps the result in a Brotli-compressed WOFF2 envelope. The conversion is lossy on hinting fidelity but visually identical at typical web sizes.