Tribblix: manual page: fontforge.1

FONTFORGE(1) User Commands FONTFORGE(1)

NAME

fontforge - create, modify, and view font files

SYNOPSIS

fontforge [-allglyphs] [-c string] [-cmap maptype] [-depth pixeld]
[-display str] [-lang=ff] [-lang=py] [-help] [-keyboard ktype]
[-last] [-new] [-nosplash] [-quiet] [-recover mode] [-script file]
[-skippyfile] [-skippyplug] [-sync] [-unique] [-usage] [-vc class]
[-version] [fontfile ...]

DESCRIPTION

FontForge will read PostScript (pfa, pfb, ps, cid), OpenType (otf),
TrueType (ttf, ttc), Macintosh resource fonts (dfont, bin, hqx),
Scaled Vector Graphics (svg), TeX bitmap (pk), Glyph Bitmap
Distribution Format (bdf), and X11 bitmap (pcf) fonts. Font files
may be compressed with gzip (for example, myfont.pcf.gz). FontForge
will also read its own format: Spline Font Database (sfd) files.

If the argument list contains a font file name (or several),
fontforge opens a fontview window for each font displaying the
characters of that font. In the absence of options or arguments, the
program opens a file-picker window, allowing you to browse your disk
to find a font file, or create a new one.

This manual page is intended only as a rudimentary overview; see the
HTML Users Manual for more complete information.

If no fontfiles are specified, and neither is -new, and there is
nothing to recover, then FontForge will produce an open font dialogue
box.

If a scriptfile is specified then FontForge will not open the X
display, nor will it process any additional arguments. It will
execute the scriptfile and give it any remaining arguments

If the first argument is an executable filename, and that file's
first line contains "fontforge", then it will be treated as a
scriptfile.

OPTIONS

-new Creates a new font.

-last Loads the last sfd file closed.

-recover none|auto|inquire|clean
Control error recovery. none suppresses crash revcovery.
auto performs automatic recover if the program crashed
before saving changes; this is the default. inquire asks
what to do with auto-saved crash recovery files. clean
deletes recovery information.

-allglyphs Load all glyphs in the 'glyf' table. of a TrueType
collection.

-nosplash Suppress display of the splash screen.

-quiet Don't print non-essential information to stderr.

-unique If a copy of fontforge is already running, open all
arguments in it and have this process exit.

-display display-name
Employ the X display specified by the string display-name
(for example: localhost:0).

-depth pixeld
Attempt to employ a visual that matches the specified
pixel depth, pixeld.

-vc val Sets the visual class if possible.

-cmap current|copy|private
Sets the type of color map. current attempts to allocate
colors int he current (shared) color map. The program
will likely not find everything it requires. copy
allocates what can be allocated, then copies the current
color map; it can thus make use of cells other programs
are using. private creates a new color map and fills it
with the required colors.

-dontopenxdevices
In case that fails.

-sync Syncs the display, debugging.

-keyboard ibm|mac|sun|ppc
Generates appropriate hotkeys in menus. Use ibm on an
IBM-compatible PC. Use mac on a Mac computer running
Mac OS. Use sun on a Sun workstation. Use ppc on Power
PC Mac running SUSE GNU/Linux.

-usecairo=yes|no
Use (or not) the cairo library for drawing.

-help Displays a help message and exits.

-docs Displays help file output and then invokes a browser
using the BROWSER environment variable.

-version Prints the version of fontforge and exits.

-lang=py Use Python for scripts (may precede -script).

-lang=ff Use fontforge's legacy scripting language.

-script scriptfile
Executes scriptfile. Must be the first option (or follow
-lang). All other arguments are passed to scriptfile.
Execute the script named file. Does not open the X
display. This must be the first argument passed to
FontForge. Any other arguments are handled by the script
file itself. Any other command line arguments will be
passed to the script. The program contains a command
interpreter, which allows access to most but not all of
its interactive features. If a script file is
executable, and if its first line contains the string
"fontforge", then the argument -script may be omitted.
This means that FontForge can be used as an interpreter.

-dry scriptfile
Syntax checks scriptfile (dry run). Must be the first
option. All other arguments are passed to scriptfile.
This option can only be used with fontforge's own
scripting language, not with Python.

-c script-string
Executes argument as scripting commands. Must be the
first option. All other arguments are passed to the
script.

-skippyfile Do not execute Python init scripts when initializing.

-skippyplug Do not load (enabled) Python plugins when initializing.

EXAMPLE

Sample usage:

fontforge myfont.ttf &

ENVIRONMENT

BROWSER
Specifies the name of a browser program for examining online
documentation.

AUTOTRACE
Specifies the location of the autotrace program. Usually
FontForge can figure this out without help, but not always.

MF Specifies the location of the metafont program.

FONTFORGE_VERBOSE
Turns on verbose mode in scripting. Each statement is printed
as it is executed.

FILES

~/.FontForge/autosave
Crash recovery directory.

/usr/share/fontforge/*.ui
Translations for user interfaces.

/usr/share/fontforge/doc/*.html
Optional location for online documentation.

/usr/share/fontforge/*.cidmap
"Encoding" files for Adobe's cid formats, from
http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/cidmaps.tgz.

NOTE

FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.

AUTHORS

FontForge is Copyright (C) 2000-2014 by George Williams, and is
currently maintained by the FontForge development team. See
/usr/share/doc/fontforge/AUTHORS for a comprehensive list of
contributors.

LICENSE

FontForge is licensed under GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
(http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) with many parts covered by a BSD
license (http://fontforge.org/license.html). Please read the LICENSE
file included in the FontForge distribution for details, or see
https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/LICENSE.

FontForge is available as a whole under the terms of the GNU GPL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), version 3 or any later
version. However, almost all of its parts are available under the
"revised BSD license" (http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/talks/bsd.pdf)
because FontForge was mostly written by George Williams, using that
license.

The Revised BSD License is very permissive, and allows for code to be
combined with other code under other licenses.

There are many useful libraries available under copyleft libre
licenses, such as the LGPL and GPL, which FontForge started to use in
2012.

For example, Pango and Cairo are available under the LGPL.

Some features added since 2012 are licensed by their individual
developers under the GPLv3.

BUGS

See the FontForge Github Issue Tracker, at
https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/issues/.

2017 Jun 18 FONTFORGE(1)