FXD provides support for a "Font.fontFromURL" method, but JavaFX itself only supports looking up fonts via the font-family name method, which is broken on all platforms.

Why is it broken? Well, the same font file, one different oses, can have a different name. There is no standard for building a font-family name from internal font info.

On macs, the font family-name returned for a system-font could be "Foo Regular Bold" and on Windows "Foo-Bold Regular". I have seen this behavior across Linux vs Windows and Mac. The font libraries for all three systems will provide differing font-family names for the same font. This makes fonts unportable. Also, the family name returned for a font installed on the system can differ from the font family name that Java comes up with loading a font from its own local font directory.

The only way to GUARANTEE you get the font you are asking for is to directly load the TTF file.