Python scripts for typeface design

The following scripts were developed to aid the design and production phases of typeface design. These have been tested to work with FontLab 4.6 on the Macintosh. As they are updated for FontLab Studio 5, this will be noted.

Note: All of these scripts require that RoboFab be installed, and most also require FontLab. The scripts should be placed in your Macro folder.

Need help with RoboFab? Have a look at this article I wrote for Typographica explaining RoboFab.

Scripts for Accents

These scripts will aid in building accents, placing anchors, and removing anchors. placeAnchor will place anchors on selected glyphs with a name and height of your choosing. removeAnchors and removeSelectedAnchors remove either all the anchors from a font or the anchors on selected glyphs in a font. buildAccents will build accented characters from glyphs which have anchors. The list of accented glyphs it will build is editable. If you have more than one accent design (say, accents for capital letters and accents for lowercase letters) the script allows the placement of each on the proper glyph.

Click to download Accent scripts

Scripts for generating test fonts

This script will make a copy of the font you are working on, remove its overlaps and decompose its characters, then give you the choice of font type to generate. After the font is generated, it deletes the copy, leaving your orignal vfb file untouched. This is very useful if you are developing a design using overlaps, and are tired of having to make a duplicate font to remove overlaps when you want to test your design. Updated April 19, 2009. Version 1.6

Click to download Better Generate Font

Scripts for dealing with Guidelines

This example script shows how one can add and remove guidelines to a vfb file. Useful for dealing with fonts with a large number of different types of glyphs (small caps, non-latins, expanded accented character sets, etc.) when one doesn't want to clutter the glyph window with guides that one isn't using.

Click to download guideline examples

Scripts for working with font metrics

These scripts make it easy to copy the sidebearing values of one vfb file to another. copySidebearings will copy the sidebearing values from one vfb to another. copySidebearingsToMaster will copy the sidebearings from a font to a specified master in a MM vfb. This is handy for when two fonts are combined into one MM vfb.

Click to download scripts for font metrics

Scripts for MultipleMaster VFBs

MultipleMaster faces are wonderful tools for testing a typeface design, but generating a large number of instances for testing is a time consuming process. This script will quickly generate any number of instances of a MM face, either as font files or vfb files (or both).

Click to download multiple master tools

If you find these scripts helpful, feel free to dontate through PayPay.

Keyboard shortcuts for FontLab 4

Confused as to what keyboard shortcut does what in FontLab 4 for the Mac? I was, and gave up and made this PDF guide. Feel free to use.

Click to download keyboard shortcut guide