I'm looking for a font that can be used for CNC engraving. Specifically, one that makes a single path for each stroke of a character instead of its outline. I'm going to be engraving this as small as physically possible on my machine as well so simplicity and legibility are important.
What fonts fit this requirement? Ideally either free or provided with an adobe cloud subscription.
According to this post on LightBurn Software forum, you are seeking SHX typefaces. The linked site also includes a posted message with a user's supplied collection of some of those typefaces, free of charge.
There's also a video in another post suggesting that one should use a search engine for "free SHX fonts." Although typeface is the correct term, font is more commonly used.
If you aren't limited to any specific software, there's an extension available in Inkscape called "Hershey Text" which allows you to use true single line SVG fonts. There's quite a limited choice, but the software and fonts are all free.
Here's an example:
All of the default fonts included in the extension are not smooth, but made of straight line segments. This could be problematic. However the one I used in the example above has nice curves. It's called TwinSans - and is available as an extra download from https://gitlab.com/oskay/svg-fonts. When you use the Hershey Text extension, you can choose the "Other" option, and type in the path to the SVG font file. You might be able to find other single line SVG fonts online.
Edit: I note there is a website where someone has provided some smoothed versions of the Hershey Text fonts here: https://cutlings.datafil.no/smoothed-single-line-fonts/.
as small as physically possible on my machine... what size is that?