PFA

Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.

PostScript Type 1 PFA Preview.

At a glance


Purpose	A PostScript Type 1 font in ASCII form (PFA): a clear-text header and a hex-encoded, eexec-encrypted private part.
Extensions	`.pfa`
Poka parser	`poka-pfa`
Viewer	`poka-metadata-card-viewer`
Depth tier	Metadata card (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier	B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers)

How much Poka reads

B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-pfa/src/main.rs (255 lines) and plugin.json. No unit tests or tests/samples.rs; the corpus has no .pfa and .pfa-font sample. Covers .pfa and .pfa-font. The card reads the clear-text header: font, full and family names, weight, version, notice, copyright, UniqueID, bounding box, italic angle, fixed pitch and underline metrics, and shows the eexec and cleartomark offsets and the hex region's size. Judgement: B4: the font's names and metrics are decoded, but its glyphs are not.

What Poka does not read

The eexec section is not decrypted, so charstrings (glyph outlines), subrs and private metrics are not read
The font is not drawn
The encoding vector is not shown

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

pdfrum-type1 (candidate; MIT OR Apache-2.0; Rust; https://docs.rs/crate/pdfrum-type1/0.1.0) — Type 1 parser covering PFA/PFB, eexec and charstrings; 0.1.0 docs.rs build failed, later versions exist.
stet-fonts (candidate; Apache-2.0 OR MIT; Rust; https://docs.rs/crate/stet-fonts/0.5.0) — Pure-Rust Type 1 (binary and ASCII, eexec), CFF and TrueType parsers; page does not mention PFA by name.

Sources

parsers/poka-pfa/src/main.rs
parsers/poka-pfa/plugin.json