Anyone tried FontConverter for PostScript to OpenType font conversion?

[JoJoe2k]

Hi everyone,

I've been on the lookout for a tool to convert my old PostScript fonts to the OTF format, and I stumbled upon FontConverter. It looks pretty promising, and the price is definitely budget-friendly, but before taking the plunge, I wanted to reach out and see if anyone has had any experience with it.

If you have, could you share your thoughts? How seamless was the conversion process? Any glitches or issues?

It's mostly for my old fonts that I rarely use, so I don't really want to re-purchase them just to get them in a new format... A lot of them are also from old "font collection" CDs, so not even sure if I could buy them again and where.

 

[Slartibart]

No experience with Fontconverter, but I use(d) Adobe’s free Font Development Kit for Open Type for that; if you have additional needs besides the pure conversion, the free Fontforge or Birdfont will provide a GUI and more.

 

[JoJoe2k]

Thanks a lot for the recommendations! I played around with the apps the last couple of days and in the end decided to go with FontConverter. It's not free, but it was the one fitting my use case most and I could easily bulk convert all my fonts at once. And to answer my own question: The conversion did work properly without any glitches 😀

Adobe's Font Development Kit would probably have been an option if I were more familiar with the command line to get it to auto convert all fonts at once. Though I wonder if it would have worked with the really old fonts from classic macos times... Here I had an issue with Fontforge which didn't allow me to open those (they didn't have any file type extension in the name. Adding one manually allowed me to open them, but there were no glyphs found in them)
Birdfont looks really nice and could open the super old fonts, but it asked me to buy a commercial license to export fonts without an "open source" license for the font itself.

Anyway, maybe this helps anyone who is looking for a similar app in the future

 

[RA12]

I know I am late on this topic, but it took me a while to figure out what was happening and what to do about it. So, I am posting my experience here.

First, old Mac "PostScript Type 1 Outline Fonts" have a Data and Resource Fork. If you try to upload them to one of the websites that converts them to OFT, the MacOS strips off the Resource Fork, leaving a file with 0 bytes. The same happens if you try to move the font to another computer using email, iCloud, or over a network.

The solution is transferring the file by zipping it first or using a flash drive. This preserves the Resource Fork.

The ultimate solution is to go to the Apple App Store and download a program named FontConverter. It works! It lets you view old postscript font for free. However, if you want to convert them to OTF, there is a $25 one-time fee. Once you pay the fee, you can convert as many fonts as you wish. It is well worth it.

It currently has a flaw that the developer is working to fix. It does not change the font name of the fonts that it converts from postscript to OTF. This means that Font Book thinks they are duplicate fonts. I had to delete the postscript version of the font to get the OTF version to work.

I hope this post saves others from the frustration I experienced trying to convert my fonts.