Fontforge
Version: 20170730 Web: https://github.com/fontforge
Astalwart of the Linux graphics scene and the only capable open source font editor, Fontforge has a niche application and is targeted at graphic artists and font designers, although anyone else might find it useful as a convenient way of converting one font type to another. It can eat up a font in Adobe format and spit out TrueType, if that’s what you need, and it understands a variety of formats not supported easily on Linux.
Fontforge is also a very good starting point for creating your own font. It offers rather sophisticated vector editing tools, so you can create your OpenType or TrueType font solely within Fontforge, but that isn’t the only way to get the job done. For instance, you can design characters using Inkscape and then export them as a series of SVG files, which in turn can be pasted into Fontforge. But the main complexity of building a font is not in the shape of the letters you can design, but in the spacing between them. Typeface designers spend a tremendous amount of time finetuning the gaps between different pairs of glyphs (characters). They also need to bear in mind hinting – a set of custom rules that let a typeface scale up and down and remain crisp-looking.
The best way to give Fontforge a try is to import an existing font and see how it looks like from inside. The main window shows you a table of available glyphs, each in an individual cell. Double-click a glyph to open it in a separate editing window. You’ll see a toolbar along the left side of the window, with a plethora of vector editing tools. You can add, delete and move nodes, draw Bezier and Spiro curves, scale or flip parts of the glyph, conduct precise measurements and more. This can be a captivating experience, and if you feel you’re ready to go more in-depth with Fontforge, don’t miss its superuseful official guide, called ‘Design with Fontforge’, on the project’s website.
“You can create your OpenType or TrueType font solely within Fontforge”