# FontForge build procedures

- Installing from a pre-built unix package
- Installing on a Mac
- Installing on MS/Windows
- Before you build (on a mac)
- Before you build (on MS/Windows)
- Building and installing from source
  - Obtaining a source distribution
    - tarball
    - from the cvs tree
  - Building & installing it
  - More complicated installs
  - Building Plugins
- Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)
- Suggested fonts
- Installing documentation
  - Installing a documentation tarball
- Running FontForge

## Before you build (on a mac)

You must insure that you have the both the X11 server and the Xcode toolchain installed on your system. This process is slightly different on OS/X 10.3 & 10.4

10.4
  - Open the Install DVD that came with your system.
  - Scroll down to "Optional Installs" and open it.
  - Keep clicking `Continue` until you get to the pane "Custom Install on "Macintosh HD""
  - Press the arrow beside "Applications" so you get a list of them.
  - Select X11
  - Keep pressing `Continue`

  - The Xcode toolchain is optional software on the install DVD. Simply insert the disk and click on the XCode install icon.
10.3
  - The X server lives in a package called X11User on the third install CD.
  - You must also install the X11SDK package on the XCode CD
  - And you must install the XCode tools themselves.

You may also want to install the fink package which includes many useful libraries (see the dependencies section below for more info on this)

You must then start up a Terminal window (the Terminal Application also lives in the Utilities sub-folder of the Applications folder) and be prepared to type commands in that window (I know, it's very un-mac-like).

## Before you build (on MS/Windows)

You must download the cygwin environment. You will need

- the basic cygwin packages
- the X11 package
- the xterm package
- the package containing gcc, make (probably called c compiler development or something)
- You may want to download some additional optional packages to provide support for various image formats (See the Dependencies section below).

Caveat: cygwin has a different approach to the file system than Windows. A filename like `C:\windows\fonts\arial.ttf` will be called `/cygdrive/c/windows/fonts/arial.ttf` under cygwin (backslashes are replaced by slashes, and the initial drive "`C:`" becomes "`/cygdrive/c`"

Having done that you should now be ready to build. Open a cygwin terminal window and be prepared to type commands in it.

## Building and installing from source

### Obtaining a source distribution

There are two basic ways to obtain a source distribution. One is by downloading an entire source tree from the web, and the other is by using the cvs utility to maintain a source tree on your machine which will be as up to date as possible. The former solution provides more stability, the latter provides access to cutting edge bugs.

#### tarball

Sourceforge's file release system will contain a tarball (a file with the extension for .tar.bz2).
Here is a direct link to a tarball, often more recent (Version 14-Jan-2006)

After you have downloaded one of these packages, either copy the tarball to where you are, or move to the directory containing the tarball (I can't provide explicit instructions here, because I don't know where your browser put the file) and type (do not type "$"):

>     $ bunzip2 fontforge*.tar.bz2
>     $ tar xf fontforge*.tar
>     $ cd fontforge-*

#### from the cvs tree

cvs is a nifty set of utilities which allows concurrent access to a source tree by many users. To set up your own (local) copy of the cvs tree (including documentation), create a new directory, cd into it and type the following (do not type "$", when it asks for a password, just hit return):

>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
>     CVS password:
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge checkout fontforge
>     $ cd fontforge

Once you have established a directory you may update it to obtain the most recent version of the source by typing:

>     $ cd fontforge
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge login
>     CVS password:
>     $ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs1.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fontforge update

You can also browse the CVS tree online. Or see sourceforge's description for more information (their information is out of date, the correct server is cvs1.sf.net not cvs.sf.net), or read the CVS manual.

### Building & installing it

Now you have the source installed on your system and you should be positioned at the top directory of that tree. You need to configure your package (this is a little program that figures out how to use your system), and then build it (do not type the "$"):

>     $ ./configure
>     $ make

Having done this you will probably want to install what you have built. This should be done as root:

>     $ su
>     password: ******
>     # make install

On the mac the process is slightly different:

>     $ sudo make install
>     password: ******

### More complicated installs

The configure script allows you to turn off and on various features of fontforge that might not be appropriate for your system. Type

>     $ configure --help

for a complete list of options. Some of the most useful are described below.

#### Building fontforge without X

If you don't want to install X11 on your system, you can use fontforge as a command line tool which can execute scripts to manipulate fonts. FontForge's scripting language is described in detail in the section on scripting.

>     $ configure --without-x

#### Building fontforge to edit type3 fonts

If you do want to edit PostScript type3 fonts, you can configure fontforge to give you access to more drawing modes than are generally available in fonts.

>     $ configure --with-multilayer

#### Building fontforge to edit device tables

If you do want to create device tables (which allow you to fix up kerning data at a specific pixel size) in OpenType fonts

>     $ configure --with-devicetables

#### Installing FontForge somewhere other than `/usr/local`

If you want to install fontforge in a different directory (say in /usr/bin)

>     $ configure --prefix=/usr

#### Installing documentation from the cvs tree

If you have a copy of the cvs tree on your system then you should be able to type

>     # make install_docs

Again you will probably need to be root to do this install too. Use either "su" or "sudo" as appropriate for your system (see above).

## Dependencies (external libraries/helper programs)

FontForge tries to avoid hard dependencies. If a library is missing then fontforge will (in most cases) be able to continue to run, it will just lack whatever functionality the library provides. So if you don't need to import tiff images, you don't need libtiff. If you don't need to handle SVG fonts you don't need libxml2, etc.

If you want to do autotracing around character images you should also download either

- Peter Selinger's potrace
- Martin Weber's autotrace program.

If you want to edit CID keyed fonts you need these character set descriptions. (These were last updated 22-Dec-2004)

You might want this addition to FontForge's built in character set encodings. Use FontForge's Encoding->Load Encoding command to add these encodings to the Encoding Menu.

With the appropriate image libraries, FontForge can import png, tiff, and gif images to act as character backgrounds for tracing purposes (FontForge can import bmp and xbm formats without external libraries). With libxml2 FontForge can read SVG fonts. With the freetype library FontForge will do a better job making bitmap characters for you (and can debug truetype). libuninameslist provides standard unicode names and annotations for unicode characters (it has been localized into English and French). With libintl (GNU gettext) fontforge can translate its user interface.

None is required for the proper compilation/execution of FontForge, if the libraries are not present they will not be used. (If the machine on which your executable was build didn't have them, then you must not only install the libraries, but rebuild fontforge from source) If your machine doesn't have them and you want them they are available from:

- Image Libraries (to allow FontForge to import images in those formats)
  - libpng (and required helper zlib)
  - libtiff
  - libungif
  - libjpeg
- Under Mac OS/X these libraries are available from the fink project.
- libxml2
  To parse SVG files and fonts
- libuninameslist
  To display unicode names and annotations.
- libiconv
  Only important for systems with no built-in iconv(). If not present FontForge contains a minimal version of the library which allows it to work. But if you want to use libiconv you must configure it with `--enable-extra-encodings`, as FontForge requires Shift-JIS.
- freetype
  To do a better job rasterizing bitmaps, and to enable the truetype debugger

  Some of FontForge's commands depend on your compiling freetype with the byte code interpreter enabled. This is disabled by default because it infringes on certain patents granted to Apple. If you have a license from Apple (or live in a country where these patents do not apply) then you may enable the interpreter by setting the appropriate macro in .../include/freetype/config/ftoption.h before you build the library (see the README.UNX file on the top level of the freetype distribution).

  To enable the truetype debugger, FontForge needs to have the freetype source directories available when it is built (there are some include files there which it depends on)

- cygwin
  To build or run on a MS Windows system you need the cygwin environment and libraries.
- libintl
  Is standard on most unixes. It is part of the fink package on the mac.

Versions of shared libraries in my builds
| libpng | libtiff | libungif | libjpeg | libxml2 | libuninameslist | freetype
i386 linux builds | 3.1.2.2 =1.2.2 | 3.5 =20011128 | 4.1.0 =4 | 62.0.0 =62 (6b) | 2.5.4 =2.5.4 | 0.0.1 | 6.3.3 =2.1.9

solaris builds

2
=1.0.8

3
=19970127

6
=62 (6b)

Mac OS/X builds

(static)

(static)

(static)

2.5.0
=2.5.0

6.3.3
=2.1.4

Normally FontForge depends on the X11 windowing system, but if you are just interested in the scripting engine (with no user interface), it may be built on systems without X (the configure script should figure this out).

You might also want to pull down some unicode bitmap fonts that fontforge uses

- my monospace fonts
- my sans-serif font
- The unifont
- ClearlyU's font
- The FreeFont project
- X fixed
- Computer Modern Unicode fonts
- Unicode Font Guide for Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems

- FontForge's conventions for non-BMP unicode bitmap fonts

To install these, put them in a directory, and in that directory type:

>         $ mkfontdir
>         $ xset fp+ `pwd`

You should make sure that the xset line happens whenever X is started on your machine (put it in your .xsession file).

## Documentation

The complete fontforge manual is available online.

- It is also available in a tarball (Version 2-Dec-2005)
- There is a shorter tutorial which
  - Is available online
  - Can be downloaded as pdf
  - example files (to work through the tutorial yourself)
- A documentation tarball can be retrieved from the file release system
- The cvs tree contains a sub-directory called htdocs containing the manual
  - The cvs tree contains a sub-sub-directory called htdocs/ja containing the Japanese translation of the manual

  See the general comments on the cvs tree to see how to access this.
  See the section on installing cvs documentation to see how to install the docs from the cvs tree

### Installing a documentation tarball

Once you have downloaded the documentation tarball as described above, you should move to the directory containing it, and type:

>     $ su
>     password: ******
>     # mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
>     # mv fontforge_htdocs*.tgz /usr/local/share/doc/fontforge
>     # tar xfz fontforge_htdocs*.tgz
>     # rm fontforge_htdocs*.tgz

After doing this fontforge will be able to find the docs on your system when you press the [F1] (or [Help]) key. If you don't do this fontforge will attempt to find documentation online.

- Running FontForge