What is this?
fontTools is a library for manipulating fonts, written in Python. The
project includes the TTX tool, that can convert TrueType and OpenType
fonts to and from an XML text format, which is also called TTX. It
supports TrueType, OpenType, AFM and to an extent Type 1 and some
Mac-specific formats. The project has an MIT open-source
licence.
Among other things this means you can use it free of charge.
Installation
FontTools 4.x requires Python 3.6
or later. FontTools 3.x requires Python 2.7 or later.
NOTE From August 2019, until no later than January 1 2020, the support
for Python 2.7 will be limited to only critical bug fixes, and no new features
will be added to the py27 branch. You can read more here
and here for the
reasons behind this decision.
The package is listed in the Python Package Index (PyPI), so you can
install it with pip:
pip install fonttools
If you would like to contribute to its development, you can clone the
repository from GitHub, install the package in 'editable' mode and
modify the source code in place. We recommend creating a virtual
environment, using virtualenv or
Python 3 venv module.
# download the source code to 'fonttools' folder
git clone https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools.git
cd fonttools
# create new virtual environment called e.g. 'fonttools-venv', or anything you like
python -m virtualenv fonttools-venv
# source the `activate` shell script to enter the environment (Un*x); to exit, just type `deactivate`
. fonttools-venv/bin/activate
# to activate the virtual environment in Windows `cmd.exe`, do
fonttools-venv\Scripts\activate.bat
# install in 'editable' mode
pip install -e .
TTX – From OpenType and TrueType to XML and Back
Once installed you can use the ttx command to convert binary font
files (.otf, .ttf, etc) to the TTX XML format, edit them, and
convert them back to binary format. TTX files have a .ttx file
extension.
ttx /path/to/font.otf
ttx /path/to/font.ttx
The TTX application can be used in two ways, depending on what
platform you run it on:
As a command line tool (Windows/DOS, Unix, macOS)
By dropping files onto the application (Windows, macOS)
TTX detects what kind of files it is fed: it will output a .ttx file
when it sees a .ttf or .otf, and it will compile a .ttf or
.otf when the input file is a .ttx file. By default, the output
file is created in the same folder as the input file, and will have the
same name as the input file but with a different extension. TTX will
never overwrite existing files, but if necessary will append a unique
number to the output filename (before the extension) such as
Arial#1.ttf
When using TTX from the command line there are a bunch of extra options.
These are explained in the help text, as displayed when typing
ttx -h at the command prompt. These additional options include:
specifying the folder where the output files are created
specifying which tables to dump or which tables to exclude
merging partial .ttx files with existing .ttf or .otf
files
listing brief table info instead of dumping to .ttx
splitting tables to separate .ttx files
disabling TrueType instruction disassembly
The TTX file format
The following tables are currently supported:
BASE, CBDT, CBLC, CFF, CFF2, COLR, CPAL, DSIG, EBDT, EBLC, FFTM,
Feat, GDEF, GMAP, GPKG, GPOS, GSUB, Glat, Gloc, HVAR, JSTF, LTSH,
MATH, META, MVAR, OS/2, SING, STAT, SVG, Silf, Sill, TSI0, TSI1,
TSI2, TSI3, TSI5, TSIB, TSID, TSIJ, TSIP, TSIS, TSIV, TTFA, VDMX,
VORG, VVAR, ankr, avar, bsln, cidg, cmap, cvar, cvt, feat, fpgm,
fvar, gasp, gcid, glyf, gvar, hdmx, head, hhea, hmtx, kern, lcar,
loca, ltag, maxp, meta, mort, morx, name, opbd, post, prep, prop,
sbix, trak, vhea and vmtx
Other tables are dumped as hexadecimal data.
TrueType fonts use glyph indices (GlyphIDs) to refer to glyphs in most
places. While this is fine in binary form, it is really hard to work
with for humans. Therefore we use names instead.
The glyph names are either extracted from the CFF table or the
post table, or are derived from a Unicode cmap table. In the
latter case the Adobe Glyph List is used to calculate names based on
Unicode values. If all of these methods fail, names are invented based
on GlyphID (eg glyph00142)
It is possible that different glyphs use the same name. If this happens,
we force the names to be unique by appending #n to the name (n
being an integer number.) The original names are being kept, so this has
no influence on a "round tripped" font.
Because the order in which glyphs are stored inside the binary font is
important, we maintain an ordered list of glyph names in the font.
Other Tools
Commands for merging and subsetting fonts are also available:
pyftmerge
pyftsubset
fontTools Python Module
The fontTools Python module provides a convenient way to
programmatically edit font files.
>>> from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
>>> font = TTFont('/path/to/font.ttf')
>>> font
>>>
A selection of sample Python programs is in the
Snippets
directory.
Optional Requirements
The fontTools package currently has no (required) external dependencies
besides the modules included in the Python Standard Library.
However, a few extra dependencies are required by some of its modules, which
are needed to unlock optional features.
The fonttools PyPI distribution also supports so-called "extras", i.e. a
set of keywords that describe a group of additional dependencies, which can be
used when installing via pip, or when specifying a requirement.
For example:
pip install fonttools[ufo,lxml,woff,unicode]
This command will install fonttools, as well as the optional dependencies that
are required to unlock the extra features named "ufo", etc.
Lib/fontTools/misc/etree.py
The module exports a ElementTree-like API for reading/writing XML files, and
allows to use as the backend either the built-in xml.etree module or
lxml. The latter is preferred whenever present,
as it is generally faster and more secure.
Extra: lxml
Lib/fontTools/ufoLib
Package for reading and writing UFO source files; it requires:
fs: (aka pyfilesystem2) filesystem
abstraction layer.
enum34: backport for the built-in enum
module (only required on Python < 3.4).
Extra: ufo
Lib/fontTools/ttLib/woff2.py
Module to compress/decompress WOFF 2.0 web fonts; it requires:
brotli: Python bindings of
the Brotli compression library.
Extra: woff
Lib/fontTools/ttLib/sfnt.py
To better compress WOFF 1.0 web fonts, the following module can be used
instead of the built-in zlib library:
zopfli: Python bindings of
the Zopfli compression library.
Extra: woff
Lib/fontTools/unicode.py
To display the Unicode character names when dumping the cmap table
with ttx we use the unicodedata module in the Standard Library.
The version included in there varies between different Python versions.
To use the latest available data, you can install:
unicodedata2:
unicodedata backport for Python 2.7 and 3.x updated to the latest
Unicode version 12.0. Note this is not necessary if you use Python 3.8
as the latter already comes with an up-to-date unicodedata.
Extra: unicode
Lib/fontTools/varLib/interpolatable.py
Module for finding wrong contour/component order between different masters.
It requires one of the following packages in order to solve the so-called
"minimum weight perfect matching problem in bipartite graphs", or
the Assignment problem:
scipy: the Scientific Library
for Python, which internally uses NumPy
arrays and hence is very fast;
munkres: a pure-Python
module that implements the Hungarian or Kuhn-Munkres algorithm.
Extra: interpolatable
Lib/fontTools/varLib/plot.py
Module for visualizing DesignSpaceDocument and resulting VariationModel.
matplotlib: 2D plotting library.
Extra: plot
Lib/fontTools/misc/symfont.py
Advanced module for symbolic font statistics analysis; it requires:
sympy: the Python library for
symbolic mathematics.
Extra: symfont
Lib/fontTools/t1Lib.py
To get the file creator and type of Macintosh PostScript Type 1 fonts
on Python 3 you need to install the following module, as the old MacOS
module is no longer included in Mac Python:
xattr: Python wrapper for
extended filesystem attributes (macOS platform only).
Extra: type1
Lib/fontTools/pens/cocoaPen.py
Pen for drawing glyphs with Cocoa NSBezierPath, requires:
PyObjC: the bridge between
Python and the Objective-C runtime (macOS platform only).
Lib/fontTools/pens/qtPen.py
Pen for drawing glyphs with Qt's QPainterPath, requires:
PyQt5: Python bindings for
the Qt cross platform UI and application toolkit.
Lib/fontTools/pens/reportLabPen.py
Pen to drawing glyphs as PNG images, requires:
reportlab: Python toolkit
for generating PDFs and graphics.
Testing
To run the test suite, you need to install pytest.
When you run the pytest command, the tests will run against the
installed fontTools package, or the first one found in the
PYTHONPATH.
You can also use tox to
automatically run tests on different Python versions in isolated virtual
environments.
pip install tox
tox
Note that when you run tox without arguments, the tests are executed
for all the environments listed in tox.ini's envlist. In our case,
this includes Python 3.6 and 3.7, so for this to work the python3.6
and python3.7 executables must be available in your PATH.
You can specify an alternative environment list via the -e option,
or the TOXENV environment variable:
tox -e py36
TOXENV="py36-cov,htmlcov" tox
Development Community
TTX/FontTools development is ongoing in an active community of
developers, that includes professional developers employed at major
software corporations and type foundries as well as hobbyists.
Feature requests and bug reports are always welcome at
https://github.com/fonttools/fonttools/issues/
The best place for discussions about TTX from an end-user perspective as
well as TTX/FontTools development is the
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/fonttools mailing list. There is also
a development https://groups.google.com/d/forum/fonttools-dev mailing
list for continuous integration notifications. You can also email Behdad
privately at behdad@behdad.org
History
The fontTools project was started by Just van Rossum in 1999, and was
maintained as an open source project at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fonttools/. In 2008, Paul Wise (pabs3)
began helping Just with stability maintenance. In 2013 Behdad Esfahbod
began a friendly fork, thoroughly reviewing the codebase and making
changes at https://github.com/behdad/fonttools to add new features and
support for new font formats.
Acknowledgements
In alphabetical order:
Olivier Berten, Samyak Bhuta, Erik van Blokland, Petr van Blokland,
Jelle Bosma, Sascha Brawer, Tom Byrer, Frédéric Coiffier, Vincent
Connare, Dave Crossland, Simon Daniels, Peter Dekkers, Behdad Esfahbod,
Behnam Esfahbod, Hannes Famira, Sam Fishman, Matt Fontaine, Yannis
Haralambous, Greg Hitchcock, Jeremie Hornus, Khaled Hosny, John Hudson,
Denis Moyogo Jacquerye, Jack Jansen, Tom Kacvinsky, Jens Kutilek,
Antoine Leca, Werner Lemberg, Tal Leming, Peter Lofting, Cosimo Lupo,
Masaya Nakamura, Dave Opstad, Laurence Penney, Roozbeh Pournader, Garret
Rieger, Read Roberts, Guido van Rossum, Just van Rossum, Andreas Seidel,
Georg Seifert, Miguel Sousa, Adam Twardoch, Adrien Tétar, Vitaly Volkov,
Paul Wise.
Copyrights
Copyright (c) 1999-2004 Just van Rossum, LettError
(just@letterror.com)
See LICENSE for the full license.
Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam. All
Rights Reserved.
Have fun!