Free font creator?

Victor · **Joined:** Sep 18, 2010 **Posts:** 13

Hello fellow gimpers.

I´m looking for a free program to make your own fonts. Do you know one?? I would like only to have freeware programs. :seeya

Oregonian · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:31 am **(#2)**

What operating system are you using, Victor?

Victor · **Joined:** Sep 18, 2010 **Posts:** 13

Oregonian wrote:

What operating system are you using, Victor?

I´m using Windows XP

Oregonian · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:55 am **(#4)**

I put a message in a fonts newsgroup I subscribe to. Hopefully I'll get good recommendations. May take awhile for a reply.

dorthyblubrd · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:48 pm **(#5)**

There is such a thing as a free font creator for Linux. If you have a spare computer kicking around, it just might be worth your time. Even a relatively underpowered system can do wonders with linux, even one driven by a GUI. Anything in the latter Pentium class and beyond works just fine...

OTOH, if you have to go out and buy one... unless you are paying considerably less than what you'd pay for a license for Fontagrapher or the like... it's not worth it.

It all really depends on how much effort you want to invest. It is perfectly possible to run a linux machine without all the geeky Unix apocrypha that used to be mandatory. IE, you don't have to have any familiarity with the system to make things work. You can just point and click. They have some fine GUIs now.

But it's still an investment in time. It's worth considering if you have some free time to invest in the project. If you are strapped for time, and don't have spare hardware, don't bother.

If you have any interest in this, PM me.

:pengy

PhotoMaster · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 1:16 pm **(#6)**

I did a search, some time ago, and they were all quite expensive. Windows has a font modifier built in, but I need to find the name again. I will post it as soon as I figure it out again.

Oregonian · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 7:39 pm **(#7)**

Here is a quote from the newsgroup. I put a link to FontForge.

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

Quote:

FontForge is a completely free open source application, and is reasonably functional. It requires its own environment - a unix-like shell running under windows. I think it's the FontForge MingW package that I installed and use successfully.

Softy was a shareware program. I believe that the author died years ago, but the website is still up, and the program is still available in its 1998 version, 1.07b. It needs a serial number.

Corel Draw isn't free, but if you already have it, it's possible to create Truetype fonts with it.

Most commercial packages (FontLab and its siblings from Pyrus, Fontographer, and others) offer short-term working trials.

PhotoMaster · **Posted:** Mon Oct 04, 2010 10:47 pm **(#8)**

I tried Softy. It looks easy enough, but when I created a test font, nothing came up as I created it. It was like a totally different font. I'll figure it out.

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16153

Try doubletype. =)
As long as you have java runtime installed it will run on any system.
http://doubletype.org/wiki/index.php/Download

Screenshot:

PhotoMaster · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:04 am **(#10)**

It looks good. I will try it out!

PhotoMaster · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:46 am **(#11)**

Started playing with it, but the help files are from a different version, so following the tutorial isn't as straight forward as I would have hoped. Still figuring it out.