Birdfont is a free font editor which lets you create vector graphics and export TTF, OTF, EOT and SVG fonts.
Many Linux distributions have packages of Birdfont in their repositories.
The software is written in the Vala programming language.
Key Features
- TTF fonts.
- Color fonts.
- Monochrome SVG fonts.
- Kerning – adjust the space between letters. There is also a spacing tab if you want to change the space for all letters and not just one pair.
- Ligature substitutions.
- Change the line height by adjusting the top and bottom margin guides.
- Alternates.
- Freehand tool.
- Layers.
- Rotate objects and point handles with 45 degree steps.
- Beziér editing.
- SVG import and export.
- Autotrace – convert raster images to vector fonts.
- Adjust underline thickness and position in a font.
- Oblique and italic transformation.
- Tool for moving objects to the baseline.
- Export large (CJK) fonts.
- Support for input with Cyrillic keyboards and other character set.
- Support for Arabic scripts.
- Themes – dark, bright, and high contrast for better readability.
- Crop rotated and resized images.
- Support for high resolution screens.
- Touch screen friendly interface.
- Redo command.
- Flatpak available.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows.
- Internationalization support including translations for Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Ukrainian.
Website: birdfont.org
Support: Tutorials, GitHub code repository
Developer: Johan Mattsson, Alexandre Prokoudine, Eduardo Schettino, Zhantong Zhang, Clemens Lang, Hideki Yamane, Rene Mensen, Marko Jovanovac
License: GNU General Public License v3.0 or a binary version that allow you to create fonts under the SIL Open Font license.
Learn Vala with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Font Editors | |
|---|---|
| FontForge | Create and modify postscript, truetype and opentype fonts |
| fontTools | Library to manipulate font files from Python |
| Birdfont | Vala based font editor |
| Glyphr Studio | Aimed at typeface design beginners and hobbyists |
| Fontra | Browser-based font editor |
| ftcli | Command line interface built with click to edit fonts using fontTools |
| Ygt | Graphical TypeType hinting program |
| Slice | Create custom font design spaces |
| TruFont | Streamlined and hackable font editor |
| Modular Font Editor K | Glyph editor for the Modular Font Editor K project |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Font Renderers | |
|---|---|
| HarfBuzz | OpenType text shaping engine |
| FreeType | Small and efficient software font engine |
| LibICU | Libraries for Unicode and internationalization |
| Fontconfig | Library for configuring and customizing font access |
| FriBidi | Implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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