BFD File

What are BFD files and how to open them

Are you having problems opening a BFD file or are you simply curious about its contents? We're here to explain the properties of these files and provide you with software that can open or handle your BFD files.

What is a BFD file?

A .BFD file is a Symbolics Lisp Font file.

Symbolics Lisp Font files store bitmap fonts used by Symbolics machines for their screen displays ("TV fonts") and laser-graphics printers (LGP-1) under the Genera operating system. They are created and maintained by Symbolics' Font Editor (FED). These font files let the system describe how each character in a font is drawn pixel by pixel, enabling text on screen or print-outs to use custom letter shapes or styles.

Within the Symbolics environment, FED reads and writes these font files by default (as of Release 5.0 from March 1984) for both the TVs and LGP-1 printers. When a font in BFD format is needed by the machine and not already loaded, it is fetched from directories such as sys:fonts;tv; via functions like fed:read-font-from-bfd-file on the 3600 and LM-2 machines. System TV fonts use BFD, and users can make or modify fonts using FED.

Files of this format begin with a recognizable byte signature: at offset zero the sequence "B F D" followed by additional bytes (hex 42 00 46 00 44 00 00 00 02) is used to identify that the file is a Symbolics Lisp Font file.

How to open BFD files

Important: Different programs may use files with the BFD file extension for different purposes, so unless you are sure which format your BFD file is, you may need to try a few different programs.

While we have not verified the apps ourselves yet, our users have suggested two different BFD openers which you will find listed below.

Last updated: August 23, 2026

Various apps that use files with this extension

These apps are known to open certain types of BFD files. Remember, different programs may use BFD files for different purposes, so you may need to try out a few of them to be able to open your specific file.

Help us help others

File.org helps thousands of users every day, and we would love to hear from you if you have additional information about BFD file formats, example files, or compatible programs. Please use the links below or email us at submit@file.org to discuss further.