A font file is not anonymous artwork - it names its designer and foundry, states its licence terms in full, and, for a web font, can name the exact customer it was sold to. Because fonts travel embedded inside PDFs and Office documents, that metadata is also how you tell whether a document had the right to use the typeface it shipped. This scan reads it all in your browser.
Scan a Font fileA font file names the people behind it. The name table records the designer (usually an individual), the manufacturer or foundry, a vendor URL and a designer URL, and the OS/2 table adds a registered four-character foundry code that maps to the vendor. The copyright and trademark strings frequently carry a person's name and a year, and a free-form unique font id has been known to hold build dates or even the generating machine's username.
Every font states its licence terms in full - the licence description and a licence URL - and declares an embedding permission (fsType) that says whether the font may be embedded in a document, installed, or used only for preview. Because fonts travel embedded inside PDFs and Office files, this is how you check whether a document had the right to use the typeface it shipped.
Web fonts carry the most identifying field of all. A WOFF or WOFF2 file can hold a metadata block whose <licensee> element names the exact customer the font was sold to, alongside named credits, a vendor, and a license or order id - a commercial web font served on a site can therefore name the person or company it was licensed to. Legacy EOT web fonts instead lock themselves to a list of website domains, naming the site they were packaged for.
The scan reads build timestamps from the head table (many editors write local time here, hinting at the author's timezone), a separate FontForge build stamp when present, a DSIG digital signature and the certificate that signed it, and the glyph count - a very low count reveals a font subset down to just the characters one web page needed. Copyright and notice strings held inside the CFF table survive even when the name table is stripped.
This is a selection. The full field manual documents the fields read from each format.
A font names its designer and foundry, a four-character vendor code, its copyright and trademark, a full licence description and licence URL, and an embedding-permission flag. It also carries build timestamps, a unique font id, the glyph count, and - for a web font - a metadata block that can name the customer it was licensed to.
Yes to both. The name table records the designer (usually an individual) and the foundry, and the copyright can carry a personal name. A WOFF or WOFF2 web font can go further: its <licensee> element names the exact customer a commercial font was sold to, and a legacy EOT font is locked to the specific website domains it was packaged for.
Because fonts travel embedded inside PDFs and Office documents, the licence text and the fsType embedding flag are how you check whether a document had the right to use the typeface it shipped - whether the font is licensed for embedding, installation, or preview only.
File X-Ray reports what a font carries but does not strip it. Much of this metadata (copyright, licence, vendor code, embedding permission) is part of the font's own tables, and clearing the identifying strings means re-generating the font in a font editor - editing the name and CFF strings, resetting the head and FontForge build dates, and removing any WOFF metadata block before you redistribute it.
File X-Ray reads Font files entirely in your browser - the file never leaves your device. This format is inspected, not modified. Scan a file now.