1FONTFORGE(1) General Commands Manual FONTFORGE(1)
2
6 fontforge - create, modify, and view font files
7
9 fontforge [-allglyphs] [-c string] [-cmap maptype] [-depth pixeld]
10 [-display str] [-lang=ff] [-lang=py] [-help] [-keyboard ktype] [-last]
11 [-new] [-nosplash] [-quiet] [-recover mode] [-script file] [-skippy‐
12 file] [-skippyplug] [-sync] [-unique] [-usage] [-vc class] [-version]
13 [fontfile ...]
14
16 FontForge will read PostScript (pfa, pfb, ps, cid), OpenType (otf),
17 TrueType (ttf, ttc), Macintosh resource fonts (dfont, bin, hqx), Scaled
18 Vector Graphics (svg), TeX bitmap (pk), Glyph Bitmap Distribution For‐
19 mat (bdf), and X11 bitmap (pcf) fonts. Font files may be compressed
20 with gzip (for example, myfont.pcf.gz). FontForge will also read its
21 own format: Spline Font Database (sfd) files.
22 If the argument list contains a font file name (or several), fontforge
24 opens a fontview window for each font displaying the characters of that
25 font. In the absence of options or arguments, the program opens a
26 file-picker window, allowing you to browse your disk to find a font
27 file, or create a new one.
28 This manual page is intended only as a rudimentary overview; see the
30 HTML Users Manual for more complete information.
31 If no fontfiles are specified, and neither is -new, and there is noth‐
33 ing to recover, then FontForge will produce an open font dialogue box.
34 If a scriptfile is specified then FontForge will not open the X dis‐
36 play, nor will it process any additional arguments. It will execute the
37 scriptfile and give it any remaining arguments
38 If the first argument is an executable filename, and that file's first
40 line contains "fontforge", then it will be treated as a scriptfile.
41
43 -new Creates a new font.
44 -last Loads the last sfd file closed.
46 -recover none|auto|inquire|clean
48 Control error recovery. none suppresses crash revcovery.
49 auto performs automatic recover if the program crashed be‐
50 fore saving changes; this is the default. inquire asks
51 what to do with auto-saved crash recovery files. clean
52 deletes recovery information.
53 -allglyphs Load all glyphs in the 'glyf' table. of a TrueType collec‐
55 tion.
56 -nosplash Suppress display of the splash screen.
58 -quiet Don't print non-essential information to stderr.
60 -unique If a copy of fontforge is already running, open all argu‐
62 ments in it and have this process exit.
63 -display display-name
65 Employ the X display specified by the string display-name
66 (for example: localhost:0).
67 -depth pixeld
69 Attempt to employ a visual that matches the specified pixel
70 depth, pixeld.
71 -vc val Sets the visual class if possible.
73 -cmap current|copy|private
75 Sets the type of color map. current attempts to allocate
76 colors int he current (shared) color map. The program will
77 likely not find everything it requires. copy allocates
78 what can be allocated, then copies the current color map;
79 it can thus make use of cells other programs are using.
80 private creates a new color map and fills it with the re‐
81 quired colors.
82 -dontopenxdevices
84 In case that fails.
85 -sync Syncs the display, debugging.
87 -keyboard ibm|mac|sun|ppc
89 Generates appropriate hotkeys in menus. Use ibm on an IBM-
90 compatible PC. Use mac on a Mac computer running Mac OS.
91 Use sun on a Sun workstation. Use ppc on Power PC Mac run‐
92 ning SUSE GNU/Linux.
93 -usecairo=yes|no
95 Use (or not) the cairo library for drawing.
96 -help Displays a help message and exits.
98 -docs Displays help file output and then invokes a browser using
100 the BROWSER environment variable.
101 -version Prints the version of fontforge and exits.
103 -lang=py Use Python for scripts (may precede -script).
105 -lang=ff Use fontforge's legacy scripting language.
107 -script scriptfile
109 Executes scriptfile. Must be the first option (or follow
110 -lang). All other arguments are passed to scriptfile. Ex‐
111 ecute the script named file. Does not open the X display.
112 This must be the first argument passed to FontForge. Any
113 other arguments are handled by the script file itself. Any
114 other command line arguments will be passed to the script.
115 The program contains a command interpreter, which allows
116 access to most but not all of its interactive features. If
117 a script file is executable, and if its first line contains
118 the string "fontforge", then the argument -script may be
119 omitted. This means that FontForge can be used as an in‐
120 terpreter.
121 -dry scriptfile
123 Syntax checks scriptfile (dry run). Must be the first op‐
124 tion. All other arguments are passed to scriptfile. This
125 option can only be used with fontforge's own scripting lan‐
126 guage, not with Python.
127 -c script-string
129 Executes argument as scripting commands. Must be the first
130 option. All other arguments are passed to the script.
131 -skippyfile Do not execute Python init scripts when initializing.
133 -skippyplug Do not load (enabled) Python plugins when initializing.
135
137 Sample usage:
138 fontforge myfont.ttf &
140
142 BROWSER
143 Specifies the name of a browser program for examining online
144 documentation.
145 AUTOTRACE
147 Specifies the location of the autotrace program. Usually Font‐
148 Forge can figure this out without help, but not always.
149 MF Specifies the location of the metafont program.
151 FONTFORGE_VERBOSE
153 Turns on verbose mode in scripting. Each statement is printed
154 as it is executed.
155
157 ~/.FontForge/autosave
158 Crash recovery directory.
159 /usr/share/fontforge/*.ui
161 Translations for user interfaces.
162 /usr/share/fontforge/doc/*.html
164 Optional location for online documentation.
165 /usr/share/fontforge/*.cidmap
167 "Encoding" files for Adobe's cid formats, from http://font‐
168 forge.sourceforge.net/cidmaps.tgz.
169
171 sfddiff(1)
172 The HTML version of the FontForge manual, available online at:
174 http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/.
175
177 FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.
178
180 FontForge is Copyright © 2000–2014 by George Williams, and is currently
181 maintained by the FontForge development team. See /usr/share/doc/font‐
182 forge/AUTHORS for a comprehensive list of contributors.
183
185 FontForge is licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
186 (http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) with many parts covered by a BSD li‐
187 cense (http://fontforge.org/license.html). Please read the LICENSE
188 file included in the FontForge distribution for details, or see
189 https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/LICENSE.
190 FontForge is available as a whole under the terms of the GNU GPL
192 (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), version 3 or any later version.
193 However, almost all of its parts are available under the "revised BSD
194 license" (http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/talks/bsd.pdf) because Font‐
195 Forge was mostly written by George Williams, using that license.
196 The Revised BSD License is very permissive, and allows for code to be
198 combined with other code under other licenses.
199 There are many useful libraries available under copyleft libre li‐
201 censes, such as the LGPL and GPL, which FontForge started to use in
202 2012.
203 For example, Pango and Cairo are available under the LGPL.
205 Some features added since 2012 are licensed by their individual devel‐
207 opers under the GPLv3.
208
210 See the FontForge Github Issue Tracker, at https://github.com/font‐
211 forge/fontforge/issues/.
212 2017 Jun 18 FONTFORGE(1)