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I used to work with Fontlab Studio to design and compile my fonts. Years have passed and my former Fontlab install vanished into the voids of a crashing harddisk.

Now that I'm gaining interest in font-design again, I used and abused the usual search engines, but I have not managed to find any free or open-source software out there with alike functionality which Fontlab offers.

Therefore I would love to know: "Is there any open-source alternative to Fontlab out there?"

(Preferably, it should be able to run on a Microsoft Windows operating system.)

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  • If you have purchased a legit copy of Fontlab Studio, can you contact them for another download? I did that with Alien Skin software at least once.
    – Voxwoman
    Mar 2, 2015 at 17:49
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    @Voxwoman LOL, I wish… at the time I was working with Fontlab, I was employed in a local advertising agency. They owned the license, not me. Yet, that didn’t stop me from regaining interest in font design years later and – as I am not a full-fledged, investor-powered advertisement agency with the appropriate cashflow to license expensive software – I was looking for an open-source alternative that I can modify whenever I think it needs a tweak of bugfix (yep, I’m one of those designers with indeep c/c++ and Java coding abilities). Guess that explains my question from your point of view too? ;)
    – e-sushi
    Mar 2, 2015 at 23:33

2 Answers 2

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Open Source Font Editors:

  1. FontForge
  2. gbdfed Bitmap Font Editor
  3. BirdFont

Freeware Font Editors:

  1. Font Struct
  2. Bit font Maker
  3. Type light
  4. Font Constructor
  5. Raster Font Editor

Commercial Font Editors:

  1. FontCreator
  2. (Fontlab Studio)

Font Management:

  1. 25 Font Management Tools Reviewed

Search results for font management:

  1. What is a good free font management tool for linux?
  2. Font management tools for Mac
  3. Font management tool across multiple machines

Misc.:

  1. The upcoming .91 release of Inkscape claims to have 'type design feeatures'
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    Fontlab Studio is a font editor, so only fontforge satisfies my needs. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate your efforts. As a matter a fact, fontforge might just be what I was looking for. Thanks! EDIT seems "Font Creator" should be listed as "Font Editor" too. ;)
    – e-sushi
    Jul 23, 2013 at 17:01
  • Added Birdfont. Haven't used it, but looks interesting.
    – DA01
    Jul 23, 2013 at 22:43
  • Fontforge is the big hitter. It comes with a steep learning curve, but that just goes with the territory -- no one ever accused FontLab of being intuitive ;)
    – plainclothes
    Jul 23, 2013 at 23:15
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Fontforge

It can be a bit clunky on Windows and crash occasionally, but then it can do that sometimes on Linux, too. Keep backups. I edit all fonts directly in my Dropbox directory so I have access to a file history.

Its user interface is strange and the author has no intention to fix that any time soon.

Some parts of it, like the auto-hinting, are actually very good and I would argue are better than Fontlab. Other parts of it are inferior. I don't, for example, think the simplify algorithm is very good, particularly for quadratic splines (which is what you use for Truetype outlines).

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  • The feature I am to date missing most in Fontforge is a way to easily preview while editing the glyphs of the font.
    – kontur
    Aug 7, 2015 at 21:37

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