FontForge
FontForge is an outline font editor that lets you create your own Postscript, TrueType, OpenType, CID-keyed, multi-master, CFF, SVG, and bitmap (BDF) fonts, or edit existing ones. It also lets you convert one format to another, and has support for many Macintosh font formats.
| Tags | Desktop Environment fonts |
|---|---|
| Licenses | BSD Original |
| Operating Systems | POSIX |
Recent releases
- 03 May 2007 11:53
Changes: Support has been added for version 2 of the Spline Font DB format.
- 05 Aug 2006 20:58
Changes: Many changes were made.
- 27 Aug 2004 22:08
Changes: Many changes have been made, including changes to the way preferences are handled in scripts.
- 28 Apr 2004 06:11
No changes have been submitted for this release.
- 31 Mar 2004 16:47
No changes have been submitted for this release.
- All comments
Recent commentsGreat software
I never used font design software before, but this one is really easy to use. However, it seems to have a large amount of good features.
Installation was completely painless (RPM), as it doesn't have many dependencies.
Works well
I happened to learn about FontForge by chance just as I encountered a need to use it; I wanted to make minor modifications to an existing set of fonts (modifications allowed by the license; thanks Bitstream!). It did seem a bit odd that FontForge uses only the base X libraries (no Gtk, no Qt) but despite a few of what I would consider oddities these days (menus work a little bit differently from what I have become used to, for example) I was quickly impressed. I read through the bulk of the manual to get an initial grasp of its organization and capabilities, and then was able to make the necessary modifications to the fonts without much fuss.
It's especially nice that it interfaces with autotrace; maybe some day I'll get a chance to work on some of those font projects that I contemplated a decade ago.
Kudos to George Williams for an excellent job, and for continuing to work on and improve FontForge. What a gift!
Recommendation
Great tool! I have to recommend it to everybody who is looking for font editor.