Typophile - FontForge now integrates Spiro - Comments

the XO displays only one

Michel Boyer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:31:46 -0700

the XO displays only one window at a time

The problem is not with FontForge, of course. This is a restriction of the XO’s graphical user interface, Sugar.

The rpm installs indeed and

Michel Boyer — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:47:23 -0700

The rpm installs indeed and FontForge runs but the XO displays only one window at a time. If I select a character to edit, all I see on the screen, in tiny characters, in a corner, is this:

In this section on Useful Tools for the XO, it is mentioned that a stripped down version of FontForge might prove useful.

The XO laptop claims to be

fontforge — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:29:15 -0700

The XO laptop claims to be based on RedHat’s Fedora on an x86 machine. If it’s a normal RedHat system then you should just be able to download the x86 rpm from the FontForge downloads page.

The site claims to support 5 programming environments, and they do not list C, which is what FontForge is written in. If this lack is real (and it’s hard for me to imagine a linux system without C) then building fontforge yourself may prove difficult.

Any luck with getting it

cuttlefish — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:02:59 -0700

Any luck with getting it running on the XO John?

Yes, the One Laptop Per

John Hudson — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:14:18 -0800

Yes, the One Laptop Per Child XO machine. My wife just ordered one (technically two, since when you buy one another gets shipped to a child in a developing nation).

I think that John is

James Puckett — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:12:36 -0800

I think that John is referring to the One Laptop Per Child XO machine, which just went on sale.

And John, given the state of geek fetishization of the XO, I’m sure that you can find plenty of programmers to compile a package for you...

XO?

twardoch — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:04:51 -0800

XO?

Well, will I be able to get

John Hudson — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:53:20 -0800

Well, will I be able to get Fontforge with Spiro to run on the XO we just ordered? :)

Building a Windows installer

twardoch — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 05:30:46 -0800

Building a Windows installer for FontForge is really quite cumbersome since Windows does not easily integrate X11, the Unix windowing system. Mac OS X ships with an optional X11 install right on the system DVD, AND it also contains all tools necessary to build (compile) FontForge. I have an easy shell script that downloads, compiles and installs FontForge and all its dependancies, all in one simple step — it would be more difficult on Windows.

I uploaded my simple one-click FontForge installer onto:
http://www.font.org/software/fontforge/buildfontforge-macosx.zip

Should work on Mac OS 10.5 and 10.4. You may need to first install subversion to get it work on 10.4.

Adam

Adam, do you fancy building

John Hudson — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:16:01 -0800

Adam, do you fancy building a Windows installer :)

The last version of

Michel Boyer — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 06:12:05 -0800

The last version of FontForge on sourceforge.net is now dated November 10 and can be fetched here. To integrate spiro, all you need is to also install libspiro. For more details on how FontForge integrates functionalities, you can have a look at the documentation on FontForge dependencies.

Michel

I’m still a bit unclear as

cuttlefish — Sun, 4 Nov 2007 09:15:27 -0800

I’m still a bit unclear as to the distinction between the G2 and G4 curve point types. They do behave differently, even though 3 points make a circle with either. I guess I’m still not used to it enough to predict the differences, and when to choose one over the other.

It is much easier to install

twardoch — Sat, 3 Nov 2007 04:31:50 -0700

It is much easier to install on Mac OS X because cvs, gcc and other important libraries are already preinstalled when you install the Developer tools from the system DVD. On Windows, it’s much more complicated to build.

Thanks, Michel! ^_^

cuttlefish — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 09:46:00 -0700

Thanks, Michel! ^_^

On a PowerPC with 10.4, you

Michel Boyer — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 05:10:40 -0700

On a PowerPC with 10.4, you can try this prebuilt package. Michel.

FontForge now integrates Spiro

cuttlefish — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:51:05 -0700

Sort of.

George Williams has extended FontForge to support Raph Levien’s Spiro curves.
Unfortunately, the process to install everything and make it function correctly is quite opaque to me.
For purposes of licensing and patents and other things I don’t understand, the Spiro libraries are not included in the basic install of the latest FontForge, so some other stuff I don’t readily understand has to be done to get them all working together.

There is a Gobuntu build recipe at http://understandinglimited.com/2007/10/26/ff-spiro/ which looks like a bunch of UNIX gobbledygook to me.

If anyone knows how to get it working on Mac OS X 10.4 X11, please share with us. I’d be much obliged.