Workflow to generate ttfs?

Scripting
1

Hi everybody

I know that Glyphs actually have limited support to TTF files.
I found a small .sh script that convert fonts to TTFs using fontforge in terminal, so I made a batch to do this automatically in terminal:

for i in *.ttf; do fontforge -script /Applications/ttfregenerate.sh $i; done;

and saving this on /Applications/ttfregenerate.sh :

#!/usr/local/bin/fontforge

Converts any font to truetype (.ttf)

Print(“Opening “+$1);
Open($1);
Print(“Saving “+$1:r+”.ttf”);
Generate($1:r+”.ttf”);
Quit(0);

You can also make an alias in ~/.bash_profile :

alias ttfregenerate=‘for i in *.ttf; do fontforge -script /Applications/ttfregenerate.sh $i; done;’

I found this faster than regenerating files in FontLab.
Regards!

j.

2

Nice! To take this a step further, this can be triggered by a folder action.

What really is missing is the TT hinting, though. For that, I use ttfautohint in an OS X service.

3

Thanks mekkablue
I actually have done this in the following command:

alias glyphsttf=‘mkdir ah && for i in *.ttf; do fontforge -script /Applications/ttfregenerate.sh $i && ttfautohint -W -x 17 $i ah/$i; done;’

I don’t know how to use folder actions :slight_smile:

4

The conversion to ttf in Glyphs is actually quite good. It preserves all the components and makes quite nice TT outlines. If you run it through ttfautohint you end up with perfect webfont material.

5

Juan, why not put the whole thing on GitHub? Like I did with github.com/mekkablue/webfontmaker

As Georg said, the regenerating is probably not necessary anymore, but please compare the results and let us know. The autohinting part sounds promising.

Folder actions are super easy. Google is your friend. Or in that case, perhaps even the help files.

6

Georg Seifert
Great, nice to know that.
It would be great if ttfautohint were integrated as a native option in the exporting panel on Glyphs :slight_smile: