Topic: FontForge saves you $80 on "Font Creator"® - create your OWN Handwriting Fonts

[Software Santa]

FontForge saves you $80 on "Font Creator"® - create your OWN Handwriting Fonts! For Windows or Mac X or Linux Computers.

Instead of "Font Creator® try this!

Awwwwwww! Too Bad! This Application hasn't been updated since late 2009! And It Won't be updated any more either.
"I no longer provide binary packages, only source packages. So sourceforge may try to give you an out of date binary. Don't take it, insist on source."
Too Bad: I can't compile from source! I rely upon developers to provide Binaries.
I DO NOT LIST "SOURCE ONLY" PROJECTS!!! I downloaded the last version from 2009 and that's it. No longer a Favorite!
I still list it BECAUSE there are old versions, that still work, available.

FontForge -- An outline font editor that lets you create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. Also lets you convert one format to another. FontForge has support for many macintosh font formats.

FontForge's user interface has been localized for: (English), Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Greek, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, German, Polish.

Different font formats
FontForge supports Type1, truetype, opentype, cff, type42, cid-keyed and svg fonts, also bdf and NFNT for bitmaps
FontForge will sort-of accept metafont files (essentially it runs metafont and autotraces the result). It won't produce .mf files
FontForge will read (but not produce) Ikarus files
FontForge will read acorn font files with a helper app.

 Er... What is a font editor?

A font editor is a progam designed to creat and modify fonts.

The most obvious aspect is that it is a drawing program like FreeHand, Inkscape or Illustrator which lets you draw the outlines of your letters. Unlike other drawing progams it expects you to draw many pictures at once (one or more for each letter) and collects them into a database.

It allows you to describe the way these pictures interact with each other (if you put one picture after the other then they should normally be separated by a certain distance -- the font's metrics, or if these two pictures are placed adjacent to one another then they turn into a third -- the font's ligatures, and so on).

Finally a font editor will bundle up all the pictures you have drawn, and all the metadata about how those pictures fit together, and will turn that bundle of stuff into a font that your computer can use to display text.

    Eeyore had three sticks on the ground, and was looking at them. Two of the sticks were touching at one end, but not at the other, and the third stick was laid across them. Piglet thought that perhaps it was a Trap of some kind.

    ``Oh, Eeyore,'' he began again, ``just ---''
    ``Is that little Piglet?'' said Eeyore, still looking hard at his sticks.
    ``Yes, Eeyore, and I---''
    ``Do you know what this is?''
    ``No,'' said Piglet.
    ``It's an A.''
    ``Oh,'' said Piglet.    
    ``Not O, A,'' said Eeyore severely.
    -- A. A. Milne, 1928
    The House At Pooh Corner
    Font design can be a Trap, but I find it a rather pleasant one. Caveat utor.

FontForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fontforge/files/fontforge-executables/