creating and editing font families

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Level 4

1,910 points

creating and editing font families

I'm posting this topic here only for lack of a better place.

Is there a native way to create and edit the contents of font families without the use of third party software?

Many moons ago I created some of my own fonts with Fontographer, running on OS 9. It came with a "suitcase" program that clumsily allowed you to edit and create your own font families. But this program is lost to me now and I was wondering if there was a way within OS X to edit this stuff without having to depend on someone else's application.

Any ideas? Anyone?

chris

2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 28, 2010 11:05 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Mar 1, 2010 5:32 AM in response to chris romano

I've never heard of any font editing software included with OS X. Fontforge is a free app that might help.

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Answer 2

chris romano Author

Level 4

1,910 points

Mar 1, 2010 10:53 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I wasn't looking for font software, per se. I thought there might be a way to script it.

Why should something as fundamental as font families be dependent on a third party application?

Perhaps my naivete is getting the best of me.

Does anyone know of a great font forum website where I could best ask this?

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Mar 1, 2010 11:21 AM in response to chris romano

Perhaps it would be useful to explain in more detail what you need to do? Create .dfont or .ttc files from some fonts you already have?

Apple has some tools of its own here, don't know if they have any relevance to your needs:

http://developer.apple.com/textfonts/Fonttools/Index.html

You could also ask in the Applescript or Unix forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=724

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735

Here is a good fonts forum:

http://www.typophile.com/forum/4

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Answer 4

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,710 points

Mar 1, 2010 1:40 PM in response to chris romano

Software is the only way to accomplish what you want if editing the font family info is your goal. That data is part of a font's internal name, like this:

No matter how many styles you create (bold, italic, bold italic, etc.) the Family Name must remain identical in order for the fonts to display as a group.

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