Preferences Dialog
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ResourceFile
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FontForge will read X Resources from a property on
the screen. But sometimes this isn't enough. You set this preference item
to specify a file from which these resources should be read (those on the
screen will also be read and will supersede those in the file).
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HelpDir
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FontForge will search this directory for help files when the user presses
[F1].
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OtherSubrsFile
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Allows you to redefine the OtherSubrs routines used in type1 fonts. The file
format is described at the scripting command
ReadOtherSubrsFile.
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FreeTypeInFontView
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Normally FontForge will use the freetype library to generate glyphs for display
in the fontview. This is a bit slower, but creates better images than using
FontForge's built-in rasterizer. This preference item allows you to control
whether to use freetype or FontForge's own rasterizer.
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AutoHint
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Whether glyphs should be automagically hinted before a bitmap glyph is generated
(improves the quality of the bitmap)
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SplashScreen
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Controls whether a splash screen is displayed on start up.
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NewCharset
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The default encoding used to create new fonts. Normally this is ISO 8859-1.
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NewEmSize
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Specifies the default number of em-units in the em-square. For PostScript
fonts this should be 1000, for truetype fonts it should be a power of two
(often 512, 1024 or 2048 will be used).
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NewFontsQuadratic
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Splines in fonts may be either in quadratic or cubic format. TrueType fonts
use quadratic splines while PostScript (and OpenType) fonts use cubic splines.
When FontForge generates a font it will convert from whatever format is used
internally to whatever format is required for the font, so there will be
no problem if this is set incorrectly, but setting it correctly for your
font means you get a clearer idea of what the outlines will look like.
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LoadedFontsAsNew
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When FontForge reads in a font it will generally keep the splines in the
format they used in the font (that is quadratic for truetype fonts and cubic
for postscript). If you set this flag then all loaded fonts will have the
same file format as that specified by NewFontsQuadratic above.
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PreferCJKEncoding
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This controls the loading of truetype and opentype fonts. If a font contains
both an unicode encoding subtable and a cjk subtable, then this item allows
you to pick which one FontForge will choose to decode.
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AskUserForCMap
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When loading an sfnt (truetype, opentype font file), ask the user which cmap
encoding s/he would like to use.
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PreserveTables
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A string containing a list of 4 letter table tags separated by commas. When
loading an SFNT (ttf/otf) file, any table in the font with one of these tags
will be preserved without interpretation. (Note: If FontForge thinks it
understands the table it will parse it rather than preserving it).
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SeekCharacter
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A unicode character (or a hex name for a unicode character, so either "A"
or "U+0041"), fontforge will attempt to scroll the display to this character
when it opens a font.
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CompactOnOpen
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Whether fontforge should make a font compact when it opens one (does not
apply to openning an sfd file which already knows whether it should be compact
or not).
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GlyphAutoGoto
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In the glyph window this controls how ff behaves when the user types a normal
character. If this is On then when a normal character is typed the glyph
window will shift to display that character, if Off typed characters will
be ignored.
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ItalicConstrained
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Whether constrained motion in the glyph view should allow motion parallel
to the italic angle as well as horizontal and vertical.
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ArrowMoveSize
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The number of em-units an arrow key will move a selected point in the glyph
view.
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ArrowAccelFactor
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When holding down the Alt (Meta) key, the arrow keys will move faster. This
preference item says how much faster.
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SnapDistance
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The maximum distance at which pointer motion in the glyph view will be snapped
to an interesting object (ie. a point, baseline, width line, etc.). This
is measured in pixels.
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SnapToInt
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When positioning points and control points, the mouse will move to the nearest
integral value. This is useful in editing TrueType (or PostScript if you
wish to save space in the font file).
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JoinSnap
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The maximum distance between the endpoints of two splines before they will
join with the Edit->Join command. This is measured in pixels in the char
view and em-units elsewhere.
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StopAtJoin
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When dragging points in the outline view, if the end point of one open contour
is moved onto the end point of another open contour then those two contours
will join. If you leave this Off then further motion will continue to move
the points, if you set this to On then FontForge will stop noticing mouse
movements (it pretends that you released the mouse button). This is useful
if you hand jitters a little on the mouse.
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CopyMetaData
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Controls the behavior of Edit->Copy from the fontview. Normally Copy does
not copy a glyph's metadata (name, encoding, etc.) but if this is set then
it will.
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UndoDepth
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Controls the maximum number of Undoes that may be retained in a glyph. (In
some rare occasions an Undo will be stored even if this depth is 0)
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UpdateFlex
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Figure out what points will be part of flex hints after every change to a
glyph. Points which are at the center of a flex hint will have a green halo
drawn around them. The criteria for flex hints are given on pages 72-73 of
Adobe's
T1_Spec.pdf.
This setting can be used to show you when those criteria are not
met.
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AutoWidthSync
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Whether you want the widths of accented glyphs to track the width of the
base glyph (so if you modify the width of A then the width of À will
automagically change, if À is built as a reference to A and a reference
to grave)
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AutoLBearingSync
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Whether you want left side bearings of accented glyphs to track the left
side bearing of base glyphs (so if you shift A left, then the accent in À
will also be shifted left)
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Clear Instructions on Big Changes
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TrueType instructions refer to points by number. So if you do any editing
that adds, removes or otherwise changes the point numbers then the instructions
will be applied to a different set of points.
Sometimes the results are amusing, but almost always they are ugly and wrong.
This is very different from having out of date PostScript Hints. There the
hints are probably just useless (as opposed to being actively bad, as here).
FontForge will normally delete all instructions to prevent this happening.
However, if you are prepared to fix up the instructions after a set of changes
you may prefer to have the instructions left. Be careful though!
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CopyTTFInstrs
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When copying and pasting in the font view, copy and paste instructions as
well as the glyph outlines.
WARNING: If you copy a glyph from
one font to another its instructions will probably not work (it will make
assumptions about the control table and subroutines which do not hold in
the new font).
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AccentOffsetPercent
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The amount of space (as a percentage of the em-square) that should be placed
between an accent and the glyph below it by the Build Accented Character
command.
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AccentCenterLowest
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Whether accents should be positioned over letters based on the center of
the accent, or on the center of the bottom of the accent.
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CharCenterHighest
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Whether accents should be positioned over letters based on the center of
of the letter, or on the center of the top of the letter.
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PreferSpacingAccents
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Whether to prefer spacing accents (Unicode 02C0-02FF) or combining accents
(0300-036F) when building accented glyphs.
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PreferPotrace
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If you system has both potrace and autotrace installed this allows you to
specify which you'd prefer FontForge to use for autotracing.
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AutotraceArgs
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This allows you to specify any arguments you want passed to the autotrace
program. Don't try to pass something that will change the input or output
format or set input or output files.
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AutotraceAsk
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If this is set then each time autotrace is invoked it will ask you for arguments.
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MfArgs
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This is the command passed to the mf (MetaFont) program which controls conversion
of .mf files into bitmaps.
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MfClearBg
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Loading a .mf font is a multi step process, first a bitmap font is generated,
it is loaded into the background, then autotrace is invoked to trace around
the backgrounds. These background bitmaps can take up a lot of space and
you may not want them after they have been autotraced. Selecting this entry
will remove those bitmaps from the font after they have been used.
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MfShowErr
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The mf program generates a fair amount of verbiage even when it is working
correctly. And if it is working correctly you don't want to see those words.
So normally FontForge suppresses messages from mf. But if something goes
wrong you do want to see mf's output and setting this will allow you to do
so.
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Foundry Name
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Used in generating bdf files (part of the X Windows font naming convention).
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TTF Foundry
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Similar to the above except that it is used inside ttf files (the achVendID
field of the OS/2 table) and is limited to 4 characters.
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NewFontNameList
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Specifies the namelist that will be attached to any new font. This list will
be used to name any glyphs created in that font. See the section on
namelists for more information.
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RecognizePUANames
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Originally Adobe used the PUA (public use area of unicode) to contain glyphs
for small caps, lower case numerals, etc. They have since changed their minds
and no longer recommend this usage. FontForge normally recognizes names like
"a.sc" as being mapped to the appropriate slot in Adobe's old view of the
PUA. If you don't like this behavior turn this item off and "a.sc" will not
have a unicode encoding.
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UnicodeGlyphNames
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Glyph names are supposed to be composed of ASCII letters and numbers (and
a few other characters). At least they are when they are stored in a font.
But when you are building a font and if you are not an English speaker, it
might be useful to have a wider range of letters available for glyph names.
You should never export these names when you generate a font (Use the Force
Glyph Names to field of the generate dialog).
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XUID-Base
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The base
"XUID". Should
uniquely identify the user's organization. If present then every new font
will be given an XUID generated by appending a random number to the end of
this string (which should consist of a set of numbers separated by spaces).
Whenever a postscript font is generated then this last number will be incremented
by 1.
I have registered with Adobe and they have assigned FontForge (actually PfaEdit)
an extended unique id base of [1021]. When you first start FontForge, FontForge
will itself append a couple of random numbers to this to give you your own
extended unique id. And individual fonts will get a fourth number added to
that.
If you want you may
register
directly with Adobe for your own XUID base.
See also Adobe's comments on
UniqueIDs
.
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AskBDFResolution
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Normally FontForge will guess at what screen resolution you intend based
on the pixel size of the font (ie. 17 pixel fonts are usually 100dpi (12pt)
and 12 pixel fonts are usually 75dpi), but sometimes you will have more esoteric
desires. Setting this will give you more control, but you have to click through
another dlg.
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HintForGen
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Whether glyphs should be automagically hinted before a font is
generated.
I am
testing a few hinting options there are three radio button sets which add
the following hints:
PS Hints
 |
 |
 |
HintBoundingBoxes
Add hints around the bounding boxes of some glyphs. Adobe seems to do this. |
HintDiagonalInter
Add hints at the intersections of diagonal stems |
HintDiagonalEnds
Add hints at the ends of diagonal stems. |
More importantly there is also the
DetectDiagonalStems option. Make sure this
is turned on if you intend to have FontForge
generate truetype instructions
automatically.
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UseNewIndicScripts
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MS has changed the way it handles indic scripts and has created a parallel
set of script tags for the new method. Set this flag if you want to create
a font using the new Indic system.
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AddDFLTScript
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Someone from Adobe recommended that almost all features should be active
in the DFLT script. So setting this flag will mean the ff will output most
features in the OpenType sub-table for the DFLT script.
This
section of the dialog allows you to define built in scripts that will
show up in the script menu. Each entry
has two things associated with it, the menu name and a script file. The menu
name will be the name of this entry inside the script menu, and the
script file will be the filename of the file
to be invoked. The "..." button allows you to browse for script files, which
I think have extension .pe (but which can have whatever extension you prefer
if you don't like my conventions).
The
Mac Features dialog allows you to define a set of default
names (in many languages) for mac features and settings. These names are
placed in the 'name' table whenever a feature/setting is used in a generated
'morx' table. (Thus if you have some common ligatures in your font, then
the "ligature" feature names, and the "common ligature" setting names will
be added to the 'name' table).
You may also use this dialog to establish which setting(s) should be on by
default in a given feature and whether the feature only allows one setting
to be on at a time (the settings are mutually exclusive). All of this data
may be overridden by the similar dialog in the
Element->Font Info dialog.
To edit an existing feature double click on that feature in
the list (at right) this will bring up the dialog on the left. Each feature
must be assigned a unique number. You should indicate whether it has mutually
exclusive features or not. You should provide names for the feature in various
languages, and you should provide settings for the feature.
To add a new name press the [New] button under the name list and you will
be prompted for a language and a name.
To add a new setting press the [New] button under the setting list. The setting
dialog contains the numeric value of this setting (Apple has decreed that
if the feature is not mutually exclusive, all settings must be even numbers),
whether this setting is on by default, and then a list of names for the setting
in as many languages as you like.


The Mac
Mapping dialog allows you to define a mapping between
OTF GSUB
feature tags and Apple's
mort/morx
Feature/Setting codes.
Apple's published
list of features and settings appears out of date (in that some features
used by current fonts are not found in it).
A four letter OTF feature tag may correspond to a mac feature/setting
combination. If you wish to create a new mapping you must first insure that
the mac feature setting you desire is present in the feature list (above),
and then you may add the mappings.
You must
specify a mac feature (which must already be defined), a mac setting code
and a 4 character opentype tag.
Other ways of configuring
A number of things that might be controlled from a preference window are
controlled by
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