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] [-help] [-keyboard ktype] [-new] [-nosplash]
11 [-recover mode] [-script file] [-sync] [-usage] [-vc class] [-version]
12 [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 be‐
49 fore 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 re‐
80 quired 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 -lang=py Use Python for scripts (may precede -script).
104 -lang=ff Use fontforge's legacy scripting language.
106 -script scriptfile
108 Executes scriptfile. Must be the first option (or follow
109 -lang). All other arguments are passed to scriptfile. Ex‐
110 ecute the script named file. Does not open the X display.
111 This must be the first argument passed to FontForge. Any
112 other arguments are handled by the script file itself. Any
113 other command line arguments will be passed to the script.
114 The program contains a command interpreter, which allows
115 access to most but not all of its interactive features. If
116 a script file is executable, and if its first line contains
117 the string "fontforge", then the argument -script may be
118 omitted. This means that FontForge can be used as an in‐
119 terpreter.
120 -dry scriptfile
122 Syntax checks scriptfile (dry run). Must be the first op‐
123 tion. All other arguments are passed to scriptfile. This
124 option can only be used with fontforge's own scripting lan‐
125 guage, not with Python.
126 -c script-string
128 Executes argument as scripting commands. Must be the first
129 option. All other arguments are passed to the script.
130
132 Sample usage:
133 fontforge myfont.ttf &
135
137 BROWSER
138 Specifies the name of a browser program for examining online
139 documentation.
140 AUTOTRACE
142 Specifies the location of the autotrace program. Usually Font‐
143 Forge can figure this out without help, but not always.
144 MF Specifies the location of the metafont program.
146 FONTFORGE_VERBOSE
148 Turns on verbose mode in scripting. Each statement is printed
149 as it is executed.
150
152 ~/.FontForge/autosave
153 Crash recovery directory.
154 /usr/share/fontforge/*.ui
156 Translations for user interfaces.
157 /usr/share/fontforge/doc/*.html
159 Optional location for online documentation.
160 /usr/share/fontforge/*.cidmap
162 "Encoding" files for Adobe's cid formats, from http://font‐
163 forge.sourceforge.net/cidmaps.tgz.
164
166 sfddiff(1)
167 The HTML version of the FontForge manual, available online at:
169 http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/.
170
172 FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.
173
175 FontForge is Copyright © 2000–2014 by George Williams, and is currently
176 maintained by the FontForge development team. See /usr/share/doc/font‐
177 forge/AUTHORS for a comprehensive list of contributors.
178
180 FontForge is licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
181 (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) with many parts covered by a BSD li‐
182 cense (http://fontforge.org/license.html). Please read the LICENSE
183 file included in the FontForge distribution for details, or see
184 https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/LICENSE.
185 FontForge is available as a whole under the terms of the GNU GPL
187 (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), version 3 or any later version.
188 However, almost all of its parts are available under the "revised BSD
189 license" (http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/talks/bsd.pdf) because Font‐
190 Forge was mostly written by George Williams, using that license.
191 The Revised BSD License is very permissive, and allows for code to be
193 combined with other code under other licenses.
194 There are many useful libraries available under copyleft libre li‐
196 censes, such as the LGPL and GPL, which FontForge started to use in
197 2012.
198 For example, Pango and Cairo are available under the LGPL.
200 Some features added since 2012 are licensed by their individual devel‐
202 opers under the GPLv3.
203
205 See the FontForge Github Issue Tracker, at https://github.com/font‐
206 forge/fontforge/issues/.
207 2017 Jun 18 FONTFORGE(1)