Hi community !
I use to work on Fontlab but I need to try an Open Source font editor software, or at least a free one, for my students.
Which one would you recommend?
I must confess that I tried FontForge but find it very slow and confusing (maybe because it runs on a mac…?).
Something more simple, for newbies type designers, would be perfect! I just want them to experimented type design: it doesn't need to be extensive.
Thank you in advance for your help!
FontForge is the only open source font editor out there that I know of.
FontLab's TypeTool and Glyphs Mini are both inexpensive options, less than $50 USD.
You could want to investigate online browser-based tools. I know there are a few,* but personally haven’t had time to determine their quality.
* There also is fontstruct.com, but, while it could be a fun and instructive tool, I don’t think it would be a real first step into font editors.
Type light might be what you are looking for. It is freeware for Windows and Mac (and an older version is also available for Linux), and is generally considered 'easy-to-use' (as far as font editors go). The freeware version has only basic drawing tools though.
http://cr8software.net/typelight.html (Windows)
http://cr8software.net/typex.html (Mac & Linux)
FontForge is acutally as mighty as FontLab, but certain builds of it are very crashy. I work in it on both Mac and Windows, works good. If you have X11 or XQuartz installed, you can get a premade build here :
http://fuuko.libferris.com/osx/packages/.
Then just open X11, then open FontForge, should work nice (but not like a native app).
On Windows you can find a build here:
http://fontforgebuilds.sourceforge.net/
Captured from web.archive.org on 19 Apr 2015. view this capture