"Even if you're relatively new to TeX, the open source typesetting program, you're probably familiar with its default 12-point Computer Modern Roman font. TeX distributions actually ship with thousands of free fonts, however, and more are freely available from places such as the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Looking for a good way to show font charts and display samples of any TeX font on your system? Here's how.
"TeX uses bitmapped fonts, which normally consist of a number of files, including an .fd file, which contains the font definition, and an .mf file, which is the source file if the font was written in the Metafont language..."
