How to Get the Font Name from an Otf or Ttf File

How do I get the font name from an otf or ttf file?

Follow these four easy steps to add and use a new font in your iOS app:

• Add your_new_font.ttf or your_new_font.otf to your Xcode project
• In your project's info.plist, add a new entry for your_new_font.ttf or your_new_font.otf to the UIAppFonts array (plain text for this one is 'Fonts provided by application')
• At this point, I recommend adding this temporary chunk of debug code to dump all fonts that are accessible by your app, including your newly added your_new_font:

//Swift

    for family: String in UIFont.familyNames {
        print("\(family)")
        for names: String in UIFont.fontNames(forFamilyName: family) {
            print("== \(names)")
        }
    }

//Objective-c

for(NSString *fontfamilyname in [UIFont familyNames]) {
    NSLog(@"family:'%@'",fontfamilyname);
    for(NSString *fontName in [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:fontfamilyname]) {
        NSLog(@"\tfont:'%@'",fontName);
    }
    NSLog(@"-------------");
}

• In the debug output, look for your new font's 'family' and 'font' name. Pass whatever is displayed as the 'font' name corresponding to your new font family (there could be more than one 'font' associated with your new font 'family') to UIFont *myNewFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"font_name_from_debug_output" size:20] and you should be in business!

How can I get the font family name from a .ttf file in golang?

It is possible to read the data of a ttf file with this go library freetype, you just need to provide the font data and it will parse all the data. There is also an article about reading ttf files content manually with javascipt here.

Edit: If you are using freetype to get the family name or other information, you can use the Name reciever function of the struct, it accepts a NameId which is an alias for uint16. (You can find the complete table of the valid value here in the name id codes section)

for example, you can get the font family name by using the following code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io/ioutil"

    "github.com/golang/freetype"
)

func main() {
    fontFile := "./font.ttf"
    fontBytes, err := ioutil.ReadFile(fontFile)
    font, err := freetype.ParseFont(fontBytes)
    if err == nil {
        fmt.Println(font.Name(1))
    }
}

How to get the title (not the name) of a text font file? (TTF and OTF)

I noticed that the "Title" column in the Explorer list view shows the exact font name string that I need, and so knowing that, then I realized that the problem can be easily solved by using the win32 shell property wrapper of the WindowsAPICodePack library to retrieve the Title property of a font file.

I'm aware that I requested a solution without 3rd party libraries, however I'm almost sure it will not be a more ideal solution than using this, because... well, the consistent alternative seems to implement the Win32 shell property wrapper ourselves.

A sample code:

Imports Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.Shell

Dim diInfo As New DirectoryInfo("C:\Fonts\")

For Each fiInfo As FileInfo In diInfo.GetFiles("*.ttf", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly)
    Dim sFile As ShellFile = ShellFile.FromFilePath(fiInfo.FullName)
    Dim title As String = sFile.Properties.System.Title.Value

    Dim sb As New StringBuilder()
    sb.AppendLine(String.Format("Name.: {0}", fiInfo.Name))
    sb.AppendLine(String.Format("Title: {0}", title))

    Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString())
Next

An example output:

Name.: OpenSans LightItalic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Light Italic

Name.: OpenSans Light_0.ttf
Title: Open Sans Light

Name.: OpenSans-Bold.ttf
Title: Open Sans Bold

Name.: OpenSans-BoldItalic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Bold Italic

Name.: OpenSans-ExtraBold.ttf
Title: Open Sans Extrabold

Name.: OpenSans-ExtraBoldItalic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Extrabold Italic

Name.: OpenSans-Italic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Italic

Name.: OpenSans-Light.ttf
Title: Open Sans Light

Name.: OpenSans-LightItalic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Light Italic

Name.: OpenSans-Regular.ttf
Title: Open Sans

Name.: OpenSans-Semibold.ttf
Title: Open Sans Semibold

Name.: OpenSans-SemiboldItalic.ttf
Title: Open Sans Semibold Italic

The only missing thing is to add "(TrueType)" or "(OpenType)" at the end of the string if we really need the exact same string as in the Windows Registry is shown (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts key).

Getting the Glyph Name from a TTF or OTF font file

In TrueType-based fonts (.TTF files), you can try parsing the 'post' table. It's fairly easy to figure out. But, only format 2.0 explicitly stores glyph names. If the post table is format 3.0, there are no glyph names stored (there are a couple of other formats defined, but fonts using them are very, very rare). In that case, your only option is to back-track using Unicode values from the 'cmap'...there are some standard references for Unicode-to-glyph names that may be useful.

For CFF-based fonts (.OTF files), glyph names are stored inside of the 'CFF ' table. That's a bit trickier to parse, but if you're only looking for the glyph name references it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out.

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