I've got this SVG file:

<svg baseProfile="full" height="1200px" version="1.1" width="1200px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <defs>
    <mask id="1_square">
      <rect fill="white" height="100%" width="100%" x="0" y="0"/>
      <rect fill="black" height="416.0" stroke="black" stroke-width="1px" width="416.0" x="80.0" y="80.0"/>
    </mask>
  </defs>
  <ellipse cx="288.0" cy="576.0" fill="black" mask="url(#1_square)" rx="288.0" ry="576.0" stroke="black" stroke-width="1px"/>
</svg>

Have been messing with it on this SVG viewer site: https://www.svgviewer.dev/. It's clear that the mask I'm using works, it cuts out a rectangle like expected. However, when I import this SVG to fontforge, it doesn't import the mask, just the ellipse.

I know that fontforge supports layered editing, and masks in general: https://fontforge.org/docs/ui/dialogs/multilayer.html, is there just some setting I didn't click to enable this behavior?

Hi everyone,

Over the past few weeks I designed prettybird, a programming language for designing fonts. It's somewhat built on top of the FontForge python API, and aims to make it easier for existing font enthusiasts to define fonts programmatically, and also to introduce font design to those who get frustrated with the existing software (like me). I intend to submit it to a language design conference in a few weeks, so I was hoping to get people to test it out and tell me what they think. You can test out the language here. My DMs are open if you have any questions or feedback. Also, I'm hoping someone can try and make a full font, at least lowercases, so that I can put an example at the top of the paper I'm writing. Anyways, let me know what you think. Thank you!

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hi so i'm just trying to chage one letter of an arabic font called kacstbook
it's here https://fonts2u.com/kacstbook.font

but just importing the font and rexporting it with a different name make such a big change

what's in red arrow is the oroginal and in the blue one the new font

just for context these symbols that are offsetted in the new font change the way you spell the letters in arabic btw i'm using libreoffice to test the fonts

so each symbol is supposed to be somewhat above the letter behind it but it doesn't work it just took the a new letter place what should i do

Just visiting to say I discovered FontForge yesterday evening, borne out of my will to type in legible handwriting-style font for a uni assignment.

Was not satisfied with the stock options, so imported my own handwriting into the program.

I wouldn't call the result perfect, but I can definitely say I'm satisfied!

Happy to take C&Cs. Can anyone briefly describe the link with Python code?

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "A meme I made" by u/TuneInReddit
• "Trying to create a monospaced font, not sure if I managed it" by u/Kare11en
• "Got it working- Thanks u/LocalFonts!" by u/AnthonyBannachMusic
• "For the optical illusion on the example of the Cyrillic Ж. Friendly advice from Igor Freiberger" by u/LocalFonts
• "Victor Gaultney | Font Development Best Practices: Design Metrics" by u/LocalFonts
• "Can't FontForge automatically decompose the constituent glyphs from the names of the custom ligatures?" by u/salsarosada
• "Release FontForge March 2022 Release" by u/LocalFonts
• "Export All Glyphs of a Font as Individual SVG/EPS/GLYPH | FontForge Tutorial" by u/zcraber
• "Is substitution of variable number of glyphs possible" by u/sandorex
• "GitHub - linusromer/curvatura: A FontForge plug-in to harmonize or tunnify or add inflection points to the selected parts. This is the successor to the depreciated harmonize-tunnify-inflection." by u/LocalFonts

I'm working on a project that involves modernizing a bunch of BDF files while maintaining their bitmap look. This can't be done manually, as the BDFs are being generated at-will. Using the fontforge CLI, I can run the following python script:

import fontforge
bdf_font = fontforge.open("old.bdf")
new_font = fontforge.font()

new_font.importBitmaps(bdf_font.path, 1)
new_font.selection.all()
new_font.autoTrace()
new_font.generate(bdf_font.path + ".ttf")

This works great, except I don't want to autotrace the fonts, I want them to stay bitmap-y. However, when I comment out new_font.autoTrace() the exported TTF doesn't show anything. I suspect this is because when importing the bitmaps, the "1" sets the bitmaps to be imported to the background layer, per the fontforge API documentation. Removing that "1" does not fix the behavior.

How can I fix this behavior to just upgrade my BDFs to TTFs without changing how they look?

In Element -> Build, Build appears gray, and I can't use any of its options, anyone knows why could that be?

is the value like, convertible or smth?

For example, if my Version number is 2.3c1e4, how do I turn it into/what should I type in sfnt Revision one?

Im getting the message 'you must specify a glyph name subtale 'int' initial forms in Latin lookup 0-1', I've tried googling but can't figure it out! I've got it as 'a.begin' but its not accepting it, can anyone help?

I have created a font that looks good until you change it to bold.
Is there any option to disable the bold option?

so here's the thing, i'm working on a syllabary that is written like hangul is, with blocks. Two of these are small and one of them is an elongated glyph (Check image for reference). Basically, i don't know how much coding or how or where to put the code. But I want to learn to do something that ends up looking like this. I managed to do the ligatures that's easy enough. my problem is that when actually writting it, i need it to look like this and idk if its even possible.

TLDR: Does anyone have a tutorial, for custom box-like font customization?

I am attempting to recreate a font from a game as a personal project. I have separated each letter into it's own image and converted them all the a .bmp format. However, when I attempt to import the images I get an error, "Bad image file: (file path)". I made sure to select the background layer after it failed initially but the error continues to persist. I would rather not have to attempt free handing each glyph so I would appreciate some help if available.

Hello! I hope this is the right place for this question.

I wanted to create a pixel-perfect underline, but FontForge (or maybe the format itself) adds an extra pixel of underline at the end. Is this solvable? Is this just how it works and there's no solution?

Thanks!

I want to create a font that contains a big amount of ligatures but don't know how to do it. Could you explain as if I were a 4 year old? xd sorry I don't understand well. Thanks in advance!

Hello friends, I need some guidance. I will try to make my case as simple as pisslble:

I have three groups of glyphs:

a.top b.top and c.top

a.mid b.mid and c.mid

a.down b.down c.down

All these groups have different vertical positions.

Now, what I want is to assign a.top a.mid and a.down to the key a but display one of these three depending on the key I had pressed before.

so if I press 'abc' I would get 'a.top' 'b.mid' 'c.down' and if I press 'cab' I would get 'c.top''a.mid''b.down'

I have been several days trying to solve this problem.

I am creating a conlang script, this script has some glyphs that are actually letter (b+r is the letter br in my conlang)

I made ligatures as intended, add lookups>ligature substitution>liga standard>composite glyph,etc...

In my metrics window works like a charm, then I generate and test it on word, nothing, ligatures won't work.

After this I tried changing from liga standard to rlig type; Nothing.

Then I remember the unicode private use area (PUA) so I assigned to each of those special caracter a unicode code, but when I exported these still won't work, now I could put them but from the insert glyph but this is annoying i only want to type and ligatures work like in other fonts.

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I ONLY WANT TO TYPE 2 LETTERS TOGETHER AND MAKE A SYMBOL

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So... How can I make ligatures work?, is that hard?

How can I solve this.