FontForge does not have a native autotrace, but it will happily use the output
of two freely available programs which do autotracing. These are:
Martin Weber’s
autotrace program
Autotrace 2.8 changed its argument conventions (around Dec 2001). New
versions (after 15 Dec) of fontforge will not work with autotrace2.7, old
versions of fontforge will not work with autotrace2.8. I see no way to make
fontforge work with both or to detect the current version…
I may not be loading the results of autotrace properly in all cases (I do in
my test cases, of course). AutoTrace traces out both foreground and
background regions, so I may sometimes leave behind a lump which represents a
background area. Just delete it if it happens (and send me the image so I can
fix things up).
You must download at least one of these, (and possibly build it), and install it
somewhere along your PATH.
Having done that you must get an image into the background of the glyph(s) you
want to autotrace. There are several ways of doing this:
From
a
bitmap
font
If you want to autotrace a bitmap font then (from the FontView)
(You will probably want to start out with a new font, but you might not)
select the bitmap font type (bdf, FON, embedded in a ttf file, TeX bitmap
(GF, PK), etc.)
turn on the
[*]
As
Background
flag
Select your font file
This should place the bitmaps into the background of the glyphs in the font.
Nothing will be visible in the font view, but if you open up an outline glyph
view, you should see the bitmap version of the glyph as a grey background.
From
the
clipboard
If you have an application that supports sending image selections by mime
type (kde does this), then you should be able to copy the image in that
application and paste it into the appropriate glyph window in FontForge
From
an
image
file
If you have a bitmap in an image (it works best if it IS a black and white
bitmap image, rather than a color image)
Open up an outline glyph view for the appropriate glyph
Make the Background layer active (this is usually not necessary)
select Format=Image (this will show you any image format that fontforge
supports)
Select your file
The image should now be visible in the background of this glyph
From
multiple
image
files
If you have many images, you can load them with one command, but you must
name them appropriately. For example if your font contains unicode characters
U+0041 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A) through U+0049 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER J) then
create files called “uni0041.png”, “uni0042.png”, … “uni0049.png”
containing the images for the appropriate characters, then (from the Font
View)
Select the requisite glyphs
select Format=Image template
select the first of your images, “uni0041.png”
This should load all images that match that template (“uni*.png”) into the
appropriate glyph slot
Once you have background images in your font (and have installed an autotrace
program)
Select all the glyphs you wish to autotrace
This can take a while, so be patient.
Unless you are working with a TeX bitmap font, you will most likely have an
extremely low resolution image. Autotrace programs work better the more
resolution you give them.
If you hold down the shift key when you invoke AutoTrace from the menu then you
will be prompted for arguments to pass to it, if you do not hold down the shift
key FontForge will use the same arguments it used last time. AutoTrace’s
arguments are described in “$ autotrace -help” or in the README file that came
with the program. Please do not specify input/output files or formats. FontForge
fills these in.
Anti-Alias Comparison
Autotracing bitmaps in FontForge
Building Accented and other Composite Glyphs
Bézier Splines
The
askMulti
Dialog
Caveats about References
Changes to the sfd format
Cidmap files
Command Line Arguments
Data Types
Delta Instruction Suggestions
Expand Stroke Facility
Extending FontForge With Python
Extensions to Adobe’s BDF for greymap fonts
FontForge and TeX
FontForge’s math
Hinting
Macintosh font formats
Major differences between FontForge’s and Adobe’s interpretation of feature files
Non standard extensions used FontForge in True/Open Type
Palm fonts
Using FontForge Plugins
Several formats for bitmap only sfnts
Spline Font Database
The X11 PCF bitmap font file format
TrueType and OpenType tables supported by FontForge
Unicode Corporate Characters used by FontForge
UniqueID and XUID
X Selections and the X Clipboard
Utilities for examining fonts
Frequently Asked Questions
Appendices
Typographical glossary
Related Topics
Documentation overview
