FontForge install procedures
for cygwin under MS Windows

Installing from a pre-built package

Before you install

You must insure that you have cygwin installed on your system. Cygwin is free. (cygwin makes MS Windows look enough like unix to allow fontforge to run there). Getting all the bits of cygwin seems to be the hardest part of installing fontforge -- probably because it is the least expected part.

Obtaining one of my pre-built packages

I post a cygwin install package on sourceforge's file release system. There's a certain amount of pother involved in using the file release system, but you get the file eventually.

Installing

I have no idea where your browser put the package you have just downloaded. This is unfortunate as I can't tell you exactly what to do next. But find the package (often it's on the desktop) and then move it into C:\cygwin\home\<username>. (where <username> is whatever name cygwin gave you)

Notes

Caveat: cygwin has a different approach to the file system than Windows. A filename like C:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf will be called /cygdrive/c/windows/fonts/arial.ttf under cygwin (backslashes are replaced by slashes, and the initial drive "C:" becomes "/cygdrive/c".

Similarly a cygwin filename "/home/<username>/myfont.ttf" becomes "C:\cygwin\home\<username>\myfont.ttf"

Caveat: Do NOT try to install a font by using fontforge to write the font directly to the Windows\Fonts directory. This doesn't work. Windows needs to do some magic when installing a font that it can't do if fontforge writes directly there. Instead have fontforge create the font somewhere else and then use Windows' own drag & drop technique to move the font from there into Windows\Fonts.

Before you build (on MS/Windows)

You must download the cygwin environment. You will need

Caveat: cygwin has a different approach to the file system than Windows. A filename like C:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf will be called /cygdrive/c/windows/fonts/arial.ttf under cygwin (backslashes are replaced by slashes, and the initial drive "C:" becomes "/cygdrive/c"

Having done that you should now be ready to build. Open a cygwin terminal window and be prepared to type commands in it.

Building and installing from source

Obtaining a source distribution

There are two basic ways to obtain a source distribution. One is by downloading an entire source tree from the web, and the other is by using the cvs utility to maintain a source tree on your machine which will be as up to date as possible. The former solution provides more stability, the latter provides access to cutting edge bugs.

tarball

Sourceforge's file release system will contain a tarball (a file with the extension for .tar.bz2).

After you have downloaded one of these packages, either copy the tarball to where you are, or move to the directory containing the tarball (I can't provide explicit instructions here, because I don't know where your browser put the file) and type (The "$" or "#" are example prompts from the computer. Do not type them yourself): 

$ bunzip2 fontforge*.tar.bz2
$ tar xf fontforge*.tar
$ cd fontforge-*

from the cvs tree

cvs is a nifty set of utilities which allows concurrent access to a source tree by many users. To set up your own (local) copy of the cvs tree (including documentation), create a new directory, cd into it and type the following (when it asks for a password, just hit return): 

$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
CVS password:
$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge checkout fontforge
$ cd fontforge

Once you have established a directory you may update it to obtain the most recent version of the source by typing: 

$ cd fontforge
$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
CVS password:
$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge update

You can also browse the CVS tree online. Or see sourceforge's description for more information (their information is out of date, the correct server is cvs1.sf.net not cvs.sf.net), or read the CVS manual.

Building & installing it

Now you have the source installed on your system and you should be positioned at the top directory of that tree. You need to configure your package (this is a little program that figures out how to use your system), and then build it: 

$ ./configure
$ make

Having done this you will probably want to install what you have built. This should be done as root: 

$ su
password: ******
# make install

On the mac the process is slightly different: 

$ sudo make install
password: ******

More complicated installs

The configure script allows you to turn off and on various features of fontforge that might not be appropriate for your system. Type 

$ configure --help

for a complete list of options. Some of the most useful are described below.

Building fontforge without X

If you don't want to install X11 on your system, you can use fontforge as a command line tool which can execute scripts to manipulate fonts. FontForge's scripting language is described in detail in the section on scripting. 

$ configure --without-x

Building fontforge to edit type3 fonts

If you do want to edit PostScript type3 fonts, you can configure fontforge to give you access to more drawing modes than are generally available in fonts. 

$ configure --with-multilayer

Building fontforge to edit device tables

If you do want to create device tables (which allow you to fix up kerning data at a specific pixel size) in OpenType fonts 

$ configure --with-devicetables

Installing FontForge somewhere other than /usr/local

If you want to install fontforge in a different directory (say in /usr/bin) 

$ configure --prefix=/usr

Installing documentation from the cvs tree

If you have a copy of the cvs tree on your system then you should be able to type 

# make install_docs

Again you will probably need to be root to do this install too. Use either "su" or "sudo" as appropriate for your system (see above).

Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)

FontForge tries to avoid hard dependencies. If a library is missing then fontforge will (in most cases) be able to continue to run, it will just lack whatever functionality the library provides. So if you don't need to import tiff images, you don't need libtiff. If you don't need to hand SVG fonts you don't need libxml2, etc.

If you want to do autotracing around character images you should also download either

If you want to edit CID keyed fonts you need these character set descriptions. (These were last updated 22-Dec-2004)

You might want this addition to FontForge's built in character set encodings. Use FontForge's Encoding->Load Encoding command to add these encodings to the Encoding Menu.

With the appropriate libraries, FontForge can import png, tiff, and gif images to act as character backgrounds for tracing purposes (FontForge can import bmp and xbm formats without external libraries). With libxml2 FontForge can read SVG fonts. With the freetype library FontForge will do a better job making bitmap characters for you. libuninameslist provides standard unicode names and annotations for unicode characters (it has been localized into English and French)

None is required for the proper compilation/execution of FontForge, if the libraries are not present they will not be used. (If the machine on which your executable was build didn't have them, then you must not only install the libraries, but rebuild fontforge from source) If your machine doesn't have them and you want them they are available from:

Versions of shared libraries in my builds
libpng libtiff libungif libjpeg libxml2 libuninameslist freetype
i386 linux builds 3.1.2.2
=1.2.2		 3.5
=20011128		 4.1.0
=4		 62.0.0
=62 (6b)		 2.5.4
=2.5.4		 0.0.1 6.3.3
=2.1.9
solaris builds 2
=1.0.8		 3
=19970127
6
=62 (6b)
Mac OS/X builds (static)
(static) (static) 2.5.0
=2.5.0
6.3.3
=2.1.4

Normally FontForge depends on the X11 windowing system, but if you are just interested in the scripting engine (with no user interface), it may be built on systems without X (the configure script should figure this out).

You might also want to pull down some unicode bitmap fonts that fontforge uses

To install these, put them in a directory, and in that directory type: 

    $ mkfontdir
    $ xset fp+ `pwd`

You should make sure that the xset line happens whenever X is started on your machine (put it in your .xsession file).

Documentation

The complete fontforge manual is available online.

Installing a documentation tarball

Once you have downloaded the documentation tarball as described above, you should move to the directory containing it, and type: 

$ su
password: ******
# mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
# mv fontforge_htdocs*.tgz /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
# tar xfz fontforge_htdocs*.tgz
# rm fontforge_htdocs*.tgz

After doing this fontforge will be able to find the docs on your system when you press the [F1] (or [Help]) key. If you don't do this fontforge will attempt to find documentation online.

Starting FontForge

Before starting fontforge on cygwin

Before you can start fontforge on cygwin you must start the X11 server.
There are many ways to do this. Here are two.

  1. On recent cygwin systems just invoke 
    C:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\bin\startxwin.bat
  2. On older systems try:

    Open a cygwin window and type 

    $ xinit

    This should create a task window that covers your entire screen, inside of which there should be an xterm (sort of like the cygwin window earlier). Be prepared to type commands in this window.

    The first command you must type will start a window manager (which allows you to move windows around and gives you title bars) 

    $ twm &

    Notes on the PATH variable

    On most systems fontforge will install itself into /usr/local/bin (that's the standard place for optional software), and this is not always in the default search path for commands (grrrr). Which means you might have everything properly installed, but nothing actually works. If you see messages like "fontforge: command not found." this has (probably) happened to you.

    So what do you do?

    You need to set the PATH environment variable so that it includes /usr/local/bin. The value of the PATH variable is a set of directories separated by colons. 

    $ echo $PATH
/home/gww/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/sbin

    Unfortunately there are two ways of doing this because there are two different conventions used by unix shells. Type: 

    $ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

    If the name of your shell is bash (as above), ksh or sh then you want to type 

    $ PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH ; export PATH

    If the name of your shell is tcsh or csh then you say 

    $ setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

    But you'd have to do that every time you logged in. Instead you want this included in the shell's initialization. Again there are two cases, for the bash family of shells you want to edit the file ~/.profile while for the csh family you want to edit the file ~/.login. On a bash system the following command is generally sufficient: 

    $ cat >>~/.profile
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH ; export PATH
^D

    (where ^D represents control-D, obtained by holding down the control key while depressing d.
    And for the csh family you would type: 

    $ cat >>~/.login
setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH
^D

    Starting fontforge from the command line

    $ fontforge font.pfa font2.sfd font3.ttf font4.otf

    will start fontforge looking at the fonts you specify on the command line. It can read either pfb or pfa fonts, and some ps fonts (type 0 fonts based on a type 1 dictionary) as well as truetype fonts, open type fonts and many other formats.

    $ fontforge -new

    will cause fontforge to create a new font (in iso-8859-1 encoding)

    $ fontforge

    will open up a file picker dialog and allow you to browse till you've found a font file (or have created a new one).

    $ fontforge -script script.pe fonts...

    This will invoke fontforge in a non-interactive mode, and have it run the named script. Any further arguments on the command line will be passed as arguments to the script and processed (or not) by it.

    Reporting Bugs

    Please report bugs by sending an e-mail to fontforge-devel@lists.sourceforge.net