XP1FontEd
!XP1FontEd is intended to be used alongside !FontEd. Either alone can be used to edit fonts, but they have different capabilities which to a large extent complement each other.
The principle functions of !XP1FontEd are:
Applying transformations (rotation, translation, scaling in X and Y directions independently, shearing, tracking) to the glyphs within the font. Amongst other things, this allows you to construct a font comprising a mixture of transformed and untransformed or differently-transformed glyphs.
Enabling conversion of RISCOS fonts to TrueType or PostScript, by generating Spline Font Database (SFD) files which can then be imported into FontForge on other platforms. This does now generate headers, and does a reasonable job of fonts of modest size, and the first part of very extensive fonts. But beyond three or four hundred characters things go a bit awry – and composite characters are definitely not yet well handled. I’m not currently working on fixing this, but will get round to it eventually. I’m also thinking about making an option to convert SFD files to RISCOS fonts.
Conversion of a font to a series of drawfiles (one per chunk), and more importantly, vice-versa. (This works fine for any size of font.) !Draw is much better (imho) than !FontEd for the actual drawing/editing of glyphs. (One chunk occupies most of an A0 page, so you can zoom right in, for perfect positioning of every control point – using Draw’s grid if you wish.)
Bulk adjustment of scaffolding for emboldened (or thinned) fonts. (!XP1FontEd itself does not offer emboldening or thinning: use !XP1MBoldn on the drawfiles.)
Unlike !FontEd, !XP1FontEd does preserve a font’s kerning tables. It does not however provide any editing facilities for them. You can use !XP1FontEd to save the kerning tables before starting work with !FontEd, and then use it again to restore them – with the proviso that some or all of the old kernings may be inappropriate for your edited font!
To edit kerning tables, you need !FontKern (originally from iSV) or !Kerner (originally from Design Concept). I don’t know whether you can still get these, or where from if you can. I find having both very useful. !FontKern allows you to save the kerning tables as a separate little file which can be restored later (XP1FontEd can do this too), which is useful because FontEd loses them; but I find !Kerner much better to use in other respects. (I’ve not yet checked whether they can handle fonts with large numbers of chunks.)
Scaffolding is preserved to the extent logically possible, and adjusted according to any transformations applied to the glyphs. Or, if you wish, you can also remove it entirely so you can restart making the scaffolding after you’ve got it in a tangle!
For information about how to use !XP1FontEd, see the help file in the application.
If you find it useful, contributions to my pension are always welcome, but certainly not required.