Manual: fontforge

FONTFORGE(1)					   General Commands Manual					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 display‐
       ing the characters of that font.	 In the absence of options or arguments, the program opens a file-picker window, al‐
       lowing 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 argu‐
       ments. 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 recov‐
		   ery 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 run‐
		   ning 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 argu‐
		   ment 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  Font‐
		   Forge can be used as an interpreter.

       -dry scriptfile
		   Syntax checks scriptfile (dry run).	Must be the first option.  All other arguments are passed to script‐
		   file.  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.

SEE ALSO
       sfddiff(1)

       The HTML version of the FontForge manual, available online at: http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/.

NOTE
       FontForge used to be called PfaEdit.

AUTHORS
       FontForge is Copyright © 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 li‐
       cense.

       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)