GNU Fontutils

The GNU font utilities to allow conversion of a scanned type specimen image into an outline (PostScript or Metafont) font. These fonts can be used with Ghostscript or TeX.

• Download sources.
• View manual.

Since the fontutils were originally written in the early 1990's, other programs have been developed which do a better job of some parts of this task. Here is a list of the fontutils programs with indications of their current status:

• imgrotate: rotates images 90 degrees, an inefficiently-implemented subset of pnmrotate (from netpbm).
• imageto: extracts individual characters from a large image; still useful.
• fontconvert: some features may still be useful, such as creating a tfm file from a bitmap.
• charspace: allows non-interactive side bearing specification, so possibly still useful. On the other hand, fontforge allows interactive specification, and has a very nice preview window for testing side bearings.
• gsrenderfont: a shell script that converts outline fonts to bitmaps at a given size. This is called from TeX programs under certain circumstances. The version here has long been replaced by the scripts in the TeX distributions.
• limn: does the actual conversion from bitmaps to splines. These days, you're much better off using autotrace or potrace.
• bzrto: conversion from the generic homegrown `bzr' (Bezier) format output by limn to PostScript Type 1, PostScript Type 3, or Metafont. Obsolete.
• bpltobzr: translate the binary bzr format into an equivalent text format `bpl' (bezier property list), for editing. Fortunately, a full-featured free outline font editor, fontforge, has been written (by George Williams).
• xbfe: bitmap font editor for shapes and metrics; astonishingly, it seems there are still no bitmap editors for any format except BDF, so still useful.

If you have questions or suggestions for the fontutils, please email bug-fontutils@gnu.org.

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Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

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Updated: $Date: 2004/07/06 00:56:34 $ $Author: karl $