twardoch-fontlab-scripts

• Python scripts for FontLab 7
• by Adam Twardoch
• Licensed at your choice under:
  • CC-0 (public domain)
  • MIT license, Copyright © 2020 Adam Twardoch

Installation

Download ZIP

1. Unzip the downloaded file.
2. With Finder or File Explorer, go inside the Script subfolder that is inside the unzipped folder.
3. Run FontLab 7, choose Scripts > Update / Install Scripts. This will install TypeRig, an extension library for FontLab 7 that is needed for some of the scripts. Restart FontLab after the installation completes.
4. In FontLab 7, from the FontLab 7 menu (Mac) or Edit menu (Windows), choose Preferences > General, and click the Open user data folder button (on the right of User data. This will open a Finder or File Explorer window, with your user data folder named FontLab 7.
5. If there is no Scripts folder inside the FontLab 7 user data folder, create it.
6. Copy the contents of the unzipped Scripts folder into the Scripts folder in your user data folder.
7. Run FontLab 7, or if it’s running, choose Scripts > Refresh Scripts

Note: This is not an official Fontlab Ltd. product. No technical support, no warranty whatsoever — but pull requests are welcome.

Usage

Open a font and run the scripts from the Scripts menu.

TW Text > Reverse Text

If you have a Glyph window active and it contains some text, run this to reverse each line (first glyph becomes last and last becomes first). Useful for right-to-left development.

TW Export Fonts > Export Fonts in Folder

1. In FontLab 7, choose Scripts > TW Export Fonts > Export Fonts in Folder
2. Choose the Source folder where you have your source .vfc, .vfj, .vfb, .otf, .ttf etc. (defaults to folder in which the currently open font is saved).
3. Specify which font types you’d like to convert, and whether the script should also recursively search in the subfolders of the Source folder.
4. Choose the Destination folder in which the exported fonts will be written.
5. Click Export Fonts As, choose (and customize if needed) the export Profile (format and settings), and choose Content that you want to export (Current layer, Instances or Masters). Don’t change the Destination settings, they’re special. Click Export.
6. The script looks for all the source fonts, opens each one and exports with your settings.
   • If you turned on Subfolders, it’ll replicate the subfolder structure in the Destination folder.
   • If a font is exported as one file (e.g. OpenType PS .otf with Current layer setting), the base filename of the source file will be used as the name of the exported file.
   • If a font is exported as multiple fonts file (Masters, Instances, color fonts or web fonts), the base filename of the source file will be used as the name of a subfolder, and the exported files will be written inside that subfolder.

TW Glyph Names and Unicode > Generate Unicodes by NAM

1. In FontLab 7, open a font and choose Scripts > TW Glyph Names and Unicode > Generate Unicodes by NAM
2. Choose a Unicode-to-glyphname NAM mapping file (with .nam file extension) that contains your custom Unicode-to-glyphname assignments (for example, “double-encoding”)
3. Choose whether the script should flag (color-mark) the glyphs in which it changed Unicode codepoints, and whether it should keep Unicodes for glyphs not covered by the NAM (otherwise it’ll unencode those glyphs)
4. Click Generate Unicodes to re-generate Unicodes in all glyphs in the font based on the NAM file.

As a separate functionality, you can also open a font, run the script and click Save NAM file. This will contain the Unicode-to-glyphname mapping of the current font.

TW Anchors > Select Glyphs by Anchor

While in Font window, run the script (if your font is large, it may take a while for the dialog to show up). The combo box shows all anchors found in all glyphs in all masters — pick one or type your own. Choose whether to search for a given anchor in the current master or all masters with the checkbox. Click Search, and all glyphs that include the anchor will be selected, plus their names will be printed to the Output panel, /-separated.

Requires TypeRig.

Other tips

Change the FontLab UI font

To change the UI font of FontLab to a lighter variant on macOS:

• Install Apple’s SF Pro font family.
• Open Preferences › General › User data and click the Open user data folder button
• When the folder opens in Finder, open the startupScript.py file in a plain-text editor or create such a file if it does not exist
• Add this code to the end of the startupScript.py file:

from PythonQt import QtGui
qapp = QtGui.QApplication.instance()
appfont = qapp.font()
appfont.setFamily("SF Pro")
appfont.setWeight(QtGui.QFont.Light)
qapp.setFont(appfont)

• Run FontLab.