Starting fontforge

Starting FontForge

Before starting fontforge on cygwin

Before you can start fontforge on cygwin you must start the X11 server.

Open a cygwin window and type

$ xinit

This should create a task window that covers your entire screen, inside of which there should be an xterm (sort of like the cygwin window earlier). Be prepared to type commands in this window.

Starting fontforge from the command line

$ fontforge font.pfa font2.sfd font3.ttf font4.otf

will start fontforge looking at the fonts you specify on the command line. It can read either pfb or pfa fonts, and some ps fonts (type 0 fonts based on a type 1 dictionary) as well as truetype fonts, open type fonts and many other formats.

$ fontforge -new

will cause fontforge to create a new font (in iso-8859-1 encoding)

$ fontforge

will open up a file picker dialog and allow you to browse till you've found a font file (or have created a new one).

$ fontforge -script script.pe fonts...

This will invoke fontforge in a non-interactive mode, and have it run the named script. Any further arguments on the command line will be passed as arguments to the script and processed (or not) by it.

For a complete description of possible arguments see the section on the command line.

On the mac

Before you start fontforge on the mac you must start the X11 server. You can do this by opening the Applications folder, and then opening the Utilities folder, and then double-clicking on "X11".

Having done that there should be a menubar with a menu labeled "Applications". Click on this. There should be a "FontForge" entry in it. Selection FontForge will start fontforge and bring up a dialog allowing you to open a font or create a new one.

Caveat: FontForge does not normally show mac resource fonts in this dialog -- however it can still open one even it it isn't displayed. Simply type in the name of the file containing it. (or, if you prefer, type a "*" in the textfield and then press the [Filter] button. This should show you all files).

If the Applications menu does not contain a "FontForge" entry, you can add one yourself:

(You may also start fontforge from the command line here. Go to the Applications menu and select xterm, and then type one of the commands listed above)

Caveat: FontForge does not use the Command key to invoke menu items. (Any use of the Command key is intercepted by X11, so Command-Q will quit out of X11 (and abort fontforge), it will not quit fontforge cleanly)

Caveat: FontForge was written assuming the availability of a three button mouse. X11 simulates this by creating a virtual three button mouse where the middle button is invoked by Option-Mouse click and the right button by Command-Mouse click.