How to add a new glyph to a font with FontTools?

roipoussiere

I'm trying to add a new glyph to a font. I managed to draw by glyph to a pen, then saved it to a glyph object with:

new_glyph = pen.glyph()

Now I would like to do something like:

font.getGlyphSet()["e_m"] = new_glyph

or (with a ttf font):

font["glyf"]["e_m"] = new_glyph

but I can't.

How to add a new glyph to a font with FontTools?

Thank you!

roipoussiere

For anyone interested, the solution was to:

1. create a new UFO;

2. add the glyph to this UFO;

3. compile this UFO to a font of the same type of the source font;

4. merge the two fonts with fonttools.merge.

drj

It turns out that you can do this directly in Python, the font object maintains a GlyphOrder and this must have the names of all glyphs; but you can set it with .setGlyphOrder. Here's a routine that i use:

def AddExtras(font, extras):                                                        
    """Add extra glyphs to a font."""                                               
                                                                                    
    glyf = font["glyf"]                                                             
    hmtx = font["hmtx"]                                                             
                                                                                    
    go = list(font.getGlyphOrder())                                                 
    go += [glyph.name for glyph in extras]                                          
    font.setGlyphOrder(go)                                                          
    for glyph in extras:                                                            
        name = glyph.name                                                           
        glyf[name] = glyph                                                          
        hmtx[name] = glyph.width, glyph.lsb                                         
 

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Actually off-topic because the question was about FontTools, but maybe useful for some to know, is that OTM has a function to simply add glyphs, also from another font. For this the Glyph Copy Tool can be used. This works, of course, also for adding logos. In addition, there is a fully featured glyph editor. Moreover, if needed, the ‘Autohint all unhinted glyphs when saving font’ option for CFF fonts can be invoked via the preferences.