OFDK (Open Font Design toolKit) - ofdk.open-fonts.org
The OFDK (Open Font Design toolKit) - ofdk.open-fonts.org
(the planet.open-fonts.org service has been retired)
The OFDK is a (loose and non-exhaustive) collection of font design/development software released under licenses complying with the Open Source Definition and positively reviewed on the Free Software Foundation license list.
The font design and production workflows are changing for the better. New editors are smarter and allow designers and engineers to take advantage of open formats and scriptability. We embrace this trend because we know that being able to adjust and shape our own tools makes us better designers and engineers. We use read/write tools and only use restricted tools only when they play well with open formats. We abandon the opaque and non-interoperable formats. We apply the principles of software engineering like version control, public development, issue tracking, containerisation and continuous integration/continuous delivery to improve font development and production. See Font Development Best Practises and SIL Font Development Notes. The font-related open standards with published royalty-free specifications are:
UFO, SFD, FEA, WOFF, OFF.
If you are making and releasing open fonts under the OFL (SIL Open Font License) then publishing your full sources with a documented, open and reproducible buildpath (that can be containerized and does not depend on restricted GUI-only or closed platform-specific tools) - while legally not a strict requirement - is highly recommended and will be beneficial to everyone involved in the long-term. Have you read the most current version of the SIL Open Font License FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)?
Some components of the OFDK are:
- Smith (framework for building, testing and releasing fonts - BSD)
- pySILfont (collection of font production utilities - MIT)
- Font::TTF (library for TTF font pre/postprocessing - Artistic2)
- Font::TTF::Scripts (collection of scripts for Font::TTF - Artistic2)
- Palaso python (collection of modules and scripts for linguistic and font processing - LGPL2+)
- Fonttools (ttx) (library for font production, also a collection of scripts - BSD)
- pyFontaine (utility to measure language coverage - GPL3)
- Fontbakery (utilities to do font testing - Apache2)
- Freetype ttfautohint (library for rasterizing and hinting, FTL, GPL2)
- Graphite (library for smart font rendering - LGPL2.1+-MPL2-GPL2+)
- GRaide (GRAphite Integrated Development Environment) (Graphite visual editor and debugger - LGPL2.1+)
- ots (opentype sanitizer) (utility to validate fonts - BSD)
- HarfBuzz (hb-view, hb-shape) (library for rendering, includes utilities - MIT)
- fontconfig (library for access and classification of font files - BSD-like)
- fontview (utility for rendering test with recent open rendering stack - GPL2)
- wofftools (utility to handle WOFF format - BSD)
- fontmake (wrapper for libraries to compile font sources - Apache2)
- font testing page (utility for testing fonts - MIT, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for content)
- FontForge (font editor - GPL3, BSD)
- Glyphs scripts (scripts for the Glyphs editor - MIT)
- TruFont (font editor - LGPL3, GPL3)
- Fontproof (utility for automated smart font proofing - MIT)
- SILE (smart typesetting engine - MIT)
- XeTeX (smart typesetting engine MIT)
Here are also a few small scripts to help with font-related tasks. Enjoy and have fun making open fonts!
Name Last modified Size Description
ttfversion.sh 2018-11-28 19:06 913 Shell Script
nautilus-install-fonts.sh 2014-01-14 11:53 1.7K Shell Script
fontfind.sh 2018-11-29 10:24 257 Shell Script
fontdiff.sh 2014-01-14 11:53 150 Shell Script
fc-version.sh 2018-11-28 19:06 493 Shell Script
odffonts.py 2014-01-14 11:53 1.6K Python script
fontversion.py 2014-09-17 19:41 2.7K Python script
fontTM.py 2014-01-14 11:53 2.1K Python script
fontreview.py 2018-11-30 19:30 2.8K Python script
fontnames.py 2014-01-14 11:53 2.6K Python script
fontlog.py 2014-01-14 11:53 2.0K Python script
fontlicense.py 2018-05-22 14:13 2.5K Python script
fontforge-open-scripts-folder.py 2015-04-12 17:16 491 Python script
fontforge-open-font-folders.py 2015-04-12 17:17 806 Python script
fontforge-generate-install.py 2015-04-12 17:15 1.8K Python script
fontembedding.py 2014-01-14 11:53 2.0K Python script
font2fea.py 2018-05-22 14:13 1.3K Python script
txtfontcoverage.pl 2014-01-14 11:53 2.0K Perl Script
ttfcoverage.pl 2014-01-14 11:53 884 Perl Script