FontForge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 FontForge |
|
| Developed by | George Williams |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 20090224 / 2009-02-24 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Development status | Active |
| Type | Font editor |
| License | BSD license |
| Website | http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/ |
FontForge (formerly known as PfaEdit[1]) is a typeface (font) editor program developed by George Williams. Fontforge is free software and is distributed under the BSD license[2]. FontForge is available for several operating systems and is localized in several languages.
Fontforge supports several font formats like TrueType, PostScript, OpenType, CID-keyed, multi-master, CFF, SVG, BDF, Datafork TrueType, etc. Fontforge can convert fonts from one format to another. FontForge can also store fonts in its native format called “spline font database files” using the .sfd extension, which has the advantage that is text-based[3]. This format facilitates designer collaboration because it allows diffs to be easily created and reviewed; the two users usually need to use the same Fontforge version, otherwise the .sfd text representation can differ too much to be useful for diff reviewing.
To facilitate automated format conversions and other transformations, Fontforge implements two scripting languages: its own legacy language, and more recently Python[4]. Support for one or both scripting languages can be selected at compile time. FontForge can be built as a python module to be loaded from python scripts[5]
Fontforge supports Adobe's OpenType feature file specification (with its own extensions to the syntax)[6]. It also supports the unofficial Microsoft mathematical typesetting extensions (MATH table)[7] introduced for Cambria Math and supported by Office 2007 and XeTeX. At least one free OpenType mathematical font has been developed in FontForge (see below).
FontForge uses FreeType for rendering fonts on screen[8]. Since 15-Nov-2008 release, FontForge can use libcairo and libpango for graphics and text rendering[9] providing anti-alaised graphics and complex text layout support.
FontForge can use Potrace to import bitmap image into a font.
Contents |
[edit] Free Fonts developed with FontForge
- Free UCS Outline Fonts (freefont)
- Linux Libertine
- DejaVu Fonts
- Asana-Math
- Beteckna
- Junicode
- OCR-A
- Rufscript
- Jura
- AtariSmall
- Fonts included with Fontforge
[edit] Supported font formats
- SFD (Fontforge)
- TTF (TrueType font)
- (PostScript, Type 1 font)
- (TeX Bitmap Fonts)
- OTB (X11 bitmap only sfnt)
- BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format)
- FON (Windows)
- FNT (Windows)
- OTF (OpenType)
- SVG
[edit] External links
- FontForge homepage
- FontForge scripting tutorial
- Open Font Library, a library of free (as in freedom) fonts
- Open Font License, a license designed for free (as in freedom) fonts
[edit] See also
- METAFONT a font specification language and compiler.
- Pango Open source multilingual text rendering engine
- FreeType a software library that implements a font rasterization engine
- OpenType a scalable format for computer fonts
[edit] References
- ^ The history of the development of FontForge
- ^ FontForge main page, license
- ^ Spline Font Database File Format
- ^ Writing scripts to change fonts in FontForge
- ^ Writing python scripts to change fonts in FontForge
- ^ FontForge's implementation of Adobe's Feature File syntax
- ^ MATH typesetting information
- ^ Building FontForge from source
- ^ Change log for FontForge
