1FONTFORGE(1) General Commands Manual FONTFORGE(1)
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6 fontforge - create, modify, and view font files
7
9 fontforge [-c string] [-cmap maptype] [-depth pixeld] [-display str]
10 [-lang=ff] [-lang=py] [-library-status] [-help] [-keyboard ktype]
11 [-new] [-nosplash] [-recover mode] [-script file] [-sync] [-usage]
12 [-vc class] [-version] [fontfile ...]
13
15 FontForge will read PostScript (pfa, pfb, ps, cid), OpenType (otf),
16 TrueType (ttf, ttc), Macintosh resource fonts (dfont, bin, hqx), Scaled
17 Vector Graphics (svg), TeX bitmap (pk), Glyph Bitmap Distribution For‐
18 mat (bdf), and X11 bitmap (pcf) fonts. Font files may be compressed
19 with gzip (for example, myfont.pcf.gz). FontForge will also read its
20 own format: Spline Font Database (sfd) files.
21 If the argument list contains a font file name (or several), fontforge
23 opens a fontview window for each font displaying the characters of that
24 font. In the absence of options or arguments, the program opens a
25 file-picker window, allowing you to browse your disk to find a font
26 file, or create a new one.
27 This manual page is intended only as a rudimentary overview; see the
29 HTML Users Manual for more complete information.
30 If no fontfiles are specified, and neither is -new, and there is noth‐
32 ing to recover, then FontForge will produce an open font dialogue box.
33 If a scriptfile is specified then FontForge will not open the X dis‐
35 play, nor will it process any additional arguments. It will execute the
36 scriptfile and give it any remaining arguments
37 If the first argument is an executable filename, and that file's first
39 line contains "fontforge", then it will be treated as a scriptfile.
40
42 -new Creates a new font.
43 -last Loads the last sfd file closed.
45 -recover none|auto|inquire|clean
47 Control error recovery. none suppresses crash revcovery.
48 auto performs automatic recover if the program crashed
49 before saving changes; this is the default. inquire asks
50 what to do with auto-saved crash recovery files. clean
51 deletes recovery information.
52 -allglyphs Load all glyphs in the 'glyf' table. of a TrueType collec‐
54 tion.
55 -nosplash Suppress display of the splash screen.
57 -quiet Don't print non-essential information to stderr.
59 -unique If a copy of fontforge is already running, open all argu‐
61 ments in it and have this process exit.
62 -display display-name
64 Employ the X display specified by the string display-name
65 (for example: localhost:0).
66 -depth pixeld
68 Attempt to employ a visual that matches the specified pixel
69 depth, pixeld.
70 -vc val Sets the visual class if possible.
72 -cmap current|copy|private
74 Sets the type of color map. current attempts to allocate
75 colors int he current (shared) color map. The program will
76 likely not find everything it requires. copy allocates
77 what can be allocated, then copies the current color map;
78 it can thus make use of cells other programs are using.
79 private creates a new color map and fills it with the
80 required colors.
81 -dontopenxdevices
83 In case that fails.
84 -sync Syncs the display, debugging.
86 -keyboard ibm|mac|sun|ppc
88 Generates appropriate hotkeys in menus. Use ibm on an IBM-
89 compatible PC. Use mac on a Mac computer running Mac OS.
90 Use sun on a Sun workstation. Use ppc on Power PC Mac run‐
91 ning SUSE GNU/Linux.
92 -usecairo=yes|no
94 Use (or not) the cairo library for drawing.
95 -help Displays a help message and exits.
97 -docs Displays help file output and then invokes a browser using
99 the BROWSER environment variable.
100 -version Prints the version of fontforge and exits.
102 -library-status
104 Prints information about optional libraries and exits.
105 -lang=py Use Python for scripts (may precede -script).
107 -lang=ff Use fontforge's legacy scripting language.
109 -script scriptfile
111 Executes scriptfile. Must be the first option (or follow
112 -lang). All other arguments are passed to scriptfile.
113 Execute the script named file. Does not open the X dis‐
114 play. This must be the first argument passed to FontForge.
115 Any other arguments are handled by the script file itself.
116 Any other command line arguments will be passed to the
117 script. The program contains a command interpreter, which
118 allows access to most but not all of its interactive fea‐
119 tures. If a script file is executable, and if its first
120 line contains the string "fontforge", then the argument
121 -script may be omitted. This means that FontForge can be
122 used as an interpreter.
123 -dry scriptfile
125 Syntax checks scriptfile (dry run). Must be the first
126 option. All other arguments are passed to scriptfile.
127 This option can only be used with fontforge's own scripting
128 language, not with Python.
129 -c script-string
131 Executes argument as scripting commands. Must be the first
132 option. All other arguments are passed to the script.
133
135 Sample usage:
136 fontforge myfont.ttf &
138
140 BROWSER
141 Specifies the name of a browser program for examining online
142 documentation.
143 AUTOTRACE
145 Specifies the location of the autotrace program. Usually Font‐
146 Forge can figure this out without help, but not always.
147 MF Specifies the location of the metafont program.
149 FONTFORGE_VERBOSE
151 Turns on verbose mode in scripting. Each statement is printed
152 as it is executed.
153
155 ~/.FontForge/autosave
156 Crash recovery directory.
157 /usr/share/fontforge/*.ui
159 Translations for user interfaces.
160 /usr/share/fontforge/doc/*.html
162 Optional location for online documentation.
163 /usr/share/fontforge/*.cidmap
165 "Encoding" files for Adobe's cid formats, from http://font‐
166 forge.sourceforge.net/ cidmaps.tgz.
167
169 sfddiff(1)
170 The HTML version of the FontForge manual, available online at:
172 http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/.
173
175 FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.
176
178 FontForge is Copyright © 2000–2014 by George Williams, and is currently
179 maintained by the FontForge development team. See /usr/share/doc/font‐
180 forge/AUTHORS for a comprehensive list of contributors.
181
183 FontForge is licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
184 (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) with many parts covered by a BSD
185 license (http://fontforge.org/license.html). Please read the LICENSE
186 file included in the FontForge distribution for details, or see
187 https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/LICENSE.
188 FontForge is available as a whole under the terms of the [GNU
190 GPL](http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), version 3 or any later ver‐
191 sion. However, almost all of its parts are available under the
192 "revised BSD license"
193 ([pdf](http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/talks/bsd.pdf)) because FontForge
194 was mostly written by George Williams, using that license.
195 The Revised BSD License is very permissive, and allows for code to be
197 combined with other code under other licenses.
198 There are many useful libraries available under copyleft libre
200 licenses, such as the LGPL and GPL, which FontForge started to use in
201 2012.
202 For example, Pango and Cairo are available under the LGPL.
204 Some features added since 2012 are licensed by their individual devel‐
206 opers under the GPLv3.
207
209 See the FontForge Github Issue Tracker, at https://github.com/font‐
210 forge/fontforge/issues/.
211 2017 Jun 18 FONTFORGE(1)