FontForge

FontForge is a free font editor for designing and editing of computer fonts. It is comparable with Fontographer and Fontlab. FontForge is available for several operating systems with X11 and Windows.

History

The program is developed in California since 2000 by the programmer and type designer George Williams ( b. 1959 ) from Santa Barbara. The reason for the development was Williams' dissatisfaction with the then leader Fontographer, which was founded in 1995 acquired by Macromedia and not further developed since 1997 in favor of in-house competitive products. Williams called his editor originally " PfaEdit " ( acronym for PostScript Font ASCII editor). After the program but was not limited to the PostScript format in late 2000, it was renamed " FontForge " in 2004.

The development of the also free GNU Font Editor 2001 was discontinued in favor of FontForge.

Properties

FontForge allows editing of fonts in the following formats: PostScript including CID -encoded fonts ( Character Identifier keyed fonts), TrueType, OpenType, including CFF ( Compact Font Format ), Multiple Master fonts, Scalable Vector Graphics ( SVG), in bitmap format BDF (Bitmap Distribution Format ) and others. In addition, can be converted from one format to another with FontForge writings.

Using a script language can use the functions of FontForge used in self-written programs. This complex and often repetitive work processes can be automated. In the next versions of FontForge this scripting language will be replaced by a link to the Python programming language.

Font Forges graphical user interface is available in Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Free fonts that are developed with FontForge

  • Linux Libertine
  • DejaVu
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