Re: [ft] FreeType2

[suzuki toshiya]

Hi,

The candidates I hit upon are following. I think
FontForge or FontUtils are most recommended if
the program by scripting language can be a solution,
and you can ignore the work for CFF OpenType.
If you are looking for a library to link with
C/C++/Java program, the solution would be sfntly
or Cairo.

I have to note that myself had never tried to make
a subsetted font, so please don't ask me to give
concrete step-by-step example :-)

Regards,
mpsuzuki

1) FontForge
http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

It has its own scripting interface and Python interface.
The advantage is that the most works you can do via GUI
can be automated via scripting interface.
The disadvantage is that FontForge has its own native
data format (designed to be independent from specific
font file formats, like, PS Type1, TrueType, CFF OpenType, etc),
so loading/saving causes the translation via its native
data format. Even if you load a TTF and generates new
font without changing anything, the indepth part of the
font may be changed.

2) "FontUtils" by Martin Hosken
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=FontUtils&_sc=1

I think this is most portable and widely used tool to
automate the small modification of the tables in TTF.
The ready-to-use tool "ttfsubset" is included.
The disadvantage would be that this kit is not ready for
CFF OpenType. In addition, about ttfsubset, you should
pass the list of glyph IDs instead of the character code
positions. Anyway, another tool "dumpfont" may help
to find the mapping table between the character codepoint
and the glyph index.

3) Google's sfntly
http://code.google.com/p/sfntly/

C++ and Java library and sample tools to manipulate TrueType
and OpenType fonts. It has a sample named "chrome_subsetter"
making a aubsetted font by the comma-separated-glyph-indexes
in its argument. If you are looking for a library to bind
with C++ or Java program, it could be a candidate.

4) Just van Rossum's TTX
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fonttools/

This is a font disassembler from a TrueType font to an XML
(and re-assembler from the XML to TrueType font). You can
make an XML source file for subsetted font by editing the
XML.

5) Cairo
http://cairographics.org/
Cairo is a graphics library and not a library to make a
font file, but it can make a subsetted font stream in
the backend for PS/PDF with embedded fonts. One of the
remarkable advantage is that Cairo can subset PostScript
or CFF OpenType fonts.

suzuki toshiya wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Do you want to make a subsetted font from a TTF?
> I remember recently Google Android developers
> produced something useful for such purpose...
> 
> Regards,
> mpsuzuki
> 
> ali_b wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I would like to know, if I can use FreeType2 to load a ttf Font, delete some 
>> charakters from it, and save it as a new ttf Font ?
>>
>>
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