SFD to T11 Converter

Produce TeX-compatible Type 1 fonts from FontForge sources

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TeX Integration

T11 output plugs directly into LaTeX and TeX workflows, making your SFD-designed font immediately usable for academic and scientific documents.

Seconds, Not Hours

Skip the manual FontForge export process — Convertio compiles your SFD into T11 on cloud servers in just a few seconds.

Any Platform

Upload and convert from any operating system with a web browser. The resulting T11 file works with TeX distributions on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

How to convert SFD to T11

1

Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.

2

Choose t11 or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)

3

Let the file convert and you can download your t11 file right afterwards

About formats

SFD (SplineFont Database) is the native source file format of FontForge, the free and open-source font editor originally created by George Williams in 2000 under the name PfaEdit. The format stores a complete font project — glyph outlines (cubic and quadratic splines), advance widths, side bearings, hinting instructions, kerning and OpenType feature tables, naming records, and metadata — in a single human-readable text file. Each glyph is described by its Unicode code point, outline coordinates, reference composites, and anchors, making the entire font design inspectable and diffable with standard text tools. SFD functions as the editable working format during font development, from which finished fonts are compiled to binary formats like OTF, TTF, or WOFF. A primary advantage is version control friendliness — because SFD is plain text, font designers can track changes to individual glyphs, merge contributions from collaborators, and maintain full revision history using Git or any other VCS. The format's completeness is another strength: it preserves every piece of data that FontForge can represent, including TrueType instructions, contextual substitution lookups, and multiple master axes, avoiding round-trip data loss during editing. The SFD specification is publicly documented and has evolved through several versions. FontForge's widespread adoption in the open-source type design community means SFD serves as the source format for hundreds of freely licensed font families distributed worldwide.
Developer: George Williams
Initial release: November 7, 2000
T11 (Type 11) is a PostScript font type defined by Adobe Systems as part of the CID-keyed font architecture, combining CID glyph addressing with TrueType outline data wrapped in a Type 42 PostScript shell. In Adobe's font type numbering, Types 9, 10, and 11 are CID-keyed counterparts to Types 1, 3, and 42 respectively — so Type 11 is essentially a CID-keyed Type 42, designed for TrueType fonts that contain very large glyph sets, particularly CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) character collections. The format allows PostScript interpreters with TrueType rasterizer support to render CJK TrueType fonts while using CID numeric indexing instead of glyph names, which is critical for character sets numbering in the tens of thousands. Glyph outlines remain in native TrueType quadratic spline format, preserving the original hinting instructions, while the CID layer provides efficient glyph access and subsetting through CMap resources. One advantage is direct TrueType rendering quality — unlike converting TrueType outlines to PostScript cubics, Type 11 passes the original outlines to the rasterizer intact, preserving hand-tuned grid-fitting instructions. The CID indexing provides another benefit by supporting multiple encoding schemes (Unicode, national standards) mapped to the same glyph collection without data duplication. Type 11 fonts appear primarily in professional CJK print production and PDF document workflows where large TrueType-based character sets must be embedded in PostScript-derived output.
Developer: Adobe Systems
Initial release: 1993

Frequently Asked Questions

Why convert SFD to T11?

T11 is a TeX-oriented Type 1 format. Converting SFD to T11 makes your custom font usable in LaTeX documents with proper encoding and metrics.

How do I use a T11 font in LaTeX?

Place the T11 file in your TeX font directory, create a TFM metric file, and reference it in your document preamble. Most TeX distributions handle this setup.

Does T11 preserve kerning?

Yes, kerning pairs from your SFD are exported so that TeX can apply correct letter spacing when typesetting with your custom font.

Is T11 the same as PFB?

T11 is a TeX-specific packaging of Type 1 data, similar to PFB but optimized for TeX font management conventions and encoding schemes.

Is the conversion free?

Yes, Convertio converts SFD to T11 at no charge directly in your web browser — no software or account required.