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Freeware Font Creator or Help with editing font characters?

N

nobodyhome

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 2, 2008
126
3
I downloaded a font somebody made and from what I can find on the internet it's a free font okay for commercial use. The only comments from the author I can find is something to the effect of "It's free! Enjoy!"

My question is the font doesn't have all the characters I need and was wondering if there was a free font editor or creator out there where I can re-create and add the characters I need. I've already made them into paths.

I don't plan on making a bunch of fonts in the future so investing a couple hundred into a font program isn't a worthwhile venture. Just want to edit this one font for my own personal use in printing. No distributing, embedding, etc.

I've heard of FontForge, but am not exactly Terminal savvy enough to mess with my system. I've tried Font Constructor, but it keeps crashing and won't let me add special characters.

Advice? Should I just give up? Did I post in the wrong section of the forum?
 
I've used FontForge on a Mac and it works well, without having to use command line. The version I've used is dated 23 September 2009. You'll need to install XQuartz X11 (I'm using XQuartz 2.7.2) to use it. FF can be downloaded from MacPorts; you will need some basic command line knowledge to install FF from MacPorts; download the MacPorts installer.

Since you already have the glyphs as paths you'll just need to import those into FF. That can be simple or tricky; depends upon the size of your paths and how "clean" they are. I had the best luck importing paths from Inkscape saved as a PS file.

You can also create glyphs from scratch in FF, but that is very time consuming. Best method I found was to scan an image of each glyph, import to Inkscape, convert to a path, save as a PS file and import to FF for re-sizing and corrections as necessary.

I was able to open FF with OS 10.8.1; didn't manipulate anything, but it should run alright. I suggest you give it a try.
 
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