Font files

This page describes how Meterian scans font files, which font formats are supported, and which metadata is collected, including name, version, license, and copyright attribution.

Meterian supports scanning font files to collect metadata useful for inventory, attribution, and compliance analysis.

The font scanner extracts metadata that is explicitly declared in the font files and does not attempt to infer usage rights beyond the available information.

The font scanner enables:

• Detection of font files in projects

• Collection of font name and version information

• Extraction of explicit license and copyright attribution

• Support for both modern and legacy font formats

Please note that additonal external tools are required for this functionality, so the use of the dockerized client, which includes them, is recommended. (otherwise, please consult the section "External tools" to use the thin client)

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Enabling the Font Scanner

Font scanning is disabled by default.

To enable font collection, use the following option:

meterian --collect-fonts

It is generally recommended to enable only the font scanner when performing this analysis:

-meterian --collect-fonts-enabled-scanners=fonts

This limits the scan to font files only. Please note that the scanning is quite comples, it may require a sensible amount of time.

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Supported Font Types

The following font formats are supported:

• aaf

• afm

• bdf

• cff

• eot

• fon

• otb

• otc

• pcf

• pfb

• pfm

• ttc

• ttf

• otf

• woff

• woff2

Both modern and legacy font formats are supported.

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Collected Data

For each supported font file, the scanner attempts to collect the following information:

Field	Description
Name	Font family name or full font name
Version	Font version string
License	License text or license URL, if present
Copyright	Copyright notice or attribution if present

License information is collected only when it is explicitly embedded in the font metadata or associated structures.

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Format Handling Notes

OpenType and TrueType Fonts

(ttf, otf, ttc, otc)

Metadata is extracted from standard OpenType tables, providing the most complete results.

WOFF and WOFF2

(woff, woff2)

Fonts are decompressed before metadata extraction and then processed as OpenType fonts.

Embedded OpenType

(eot)

• Header metadata (such as name and version) is always collected.

• When possible, the embedded font data is extracted to collect additional metadata.

• Some EOT files use proprietary compression and may expose limited information.

Legacy Font Formats

(bdf, pcf, fon, pfb, pfm, afm, aaf)

Metadata availability depends on the format and embedded information. In some cases, only partial metadata can be collected.

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External Tools (Thin Client)

When using the thin client, the following external tools are required for full font scanning support:

• exiftool

• woff2_decompress

• eot2ttf

These tools must be available in the execution environment. You can for example install them on a Linux box using a similar set of commands:

apt add exiftool
apt add woff2
apt add build-base autoconf automake libtool
git clone https://github.com/umanwizard/libeot.git \
 && cd libeot \
 && autoreconf -i \
 && ./configure \
 && make && make install \
 && cd .. && rm -r libeot

When using the dockerized client, all required tools are already included.

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Limitations

• License and copyright data are collected only when explicitly present.

• Some font formats expose limited metadata.

• Proprietary compression schemes may prevent full metadata extraction.