1 ttf2png - True Type Font to PNG converter
2 Copyright (c) 2004-2021 Mikko Rasa, Mikkosoft Productions
9 C compiler (preferably GCC)
15 Range of code points to convert, specified as unicode code points. The
16 default is 0,255, matching the ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. Code
17 points can be specified as plain numbers, unicode code points (U+xxxx) or
18 UTF-8 characters. This option can be specified multiple times to add
19 more ranges to be converted.
22 Font size to use. The default is 10 pixels.
25 Number of glyphs to put in one line. Defaults to autodetect. Ignored
28 -c <pixels>[x<pixels>]
29 Character cell size. If only a single number is given, a square cell is
30 used. The special values auto and autorect may be used to choose an
31 autodetected square or rectangle cell, respectively. The default is auto.
32 Ignored if -p is used.
35 Output file name. Use - for stdout; the output is a png image, so it's
36 best to pipe it somewhere. The default is font.png.
39 Force autohinter. By default native hinting is used if present in the
43 Render glyphs to alpha channel, with grey channel filled with white. By
44 default only the grey channel is used.
47 Invert colors of the glyphs. When rendering to alpha channel, only the
48 alpha channel is inverted. The default is to render black glyphs on a
52 Increase the level of verbosity.
55 Use cells in sequence, without leaving gaps. By default the position of
56 each glyph is determined by its code point. Ignored if -p is used.
59 Pack the glyphs tightly in the image. Small gaps are left between glyphs,
60 controlled by the -n option. By default glyphs are rendered in a regular
61 grid. Creating a definition file is recommended, as the resulting image
62 can seem rather messy.
65 Leave a margin around the edges of the generated image. By default glyphs
66 can touch the edges. Only used with -p.
69 Control the amount of padding between glyphs. The default is 1 pixel.
73 Allow the resulting image to have a non-power-of-two size. By default the
74 image size is rounded up to a power of two for maximum compatibility.
77 Generate a distance field texture. The argument controls the amount of
78 oversampling when calculating distances. Larger values may produce more
79 accurate results but take longer to process. Distance fields are always
80 stored without alpha and with large/positive values indicating the inside
81 of glyphs; the -t and -i options are ignored.
84 Set the border zone width for distance field. The default is the square
85 root of the font size.
88 File name to write glyph definitions. See the section below for details.
91 Print a help message with option summary.
94 Glyph definition files
96 Rendering a proportional font correctly requires some positioning and spacing
97 information, called font metrics. To that end, ttf2png can write a definition
98 file alongside the image.
100 The basic format is line-based. Empty lines, or those starting with a hash
101 sign (#), should be ignored. Data lines consist of a keyword followed by
102 space-separated fields.
104 The keyword "font" is followed by five fields with overall information about
105 the image and the font:
107 Fields 1-2: width and height of the image
108 Field 3: nominal size of the font
109 Fields 4-5: ascent and descent of the font
111 The keyword "code" is followed by two fields establishing a code point to
114 Field 1: Unicode code point
117 The keyword "metrics" is followed by six fields describing the metrics of a
120 Field 1: the index of the glyph
121 Fields 2-3: width and height of the glyph
122 Fields 4-5: x and y offset of the glyph from its base point
123 Field 6: advance from this glyph to the next
125 The following ASCII art image illustrates the basic metrics. The character
126 box is a conceptual rectangle in which most of the glyphs in the font fit.
127 Some fonts may contain glyphs that extend outside of the nominal character
141 _ __x___|_______|___|____|__ baseline
143 v | o-------o | | descent
152 The keyword "glyph" is followed by six field describing the area of the image
155 Field 1: the index of the glyph
156 Fields 2-3: x and y position of the glyph in the image
157 Fields 4-5: width and height of the glyph
158 Field 6: border zone included in the image
160 The border zone is used with distance field textures to allow the distance
161 field to extend past the actual glyph. If a glyph has a border, the origin
162 point in the metrics refers to the glyph's lower left corner. Subtract the
163 border width from both coordinates to obtain the correct rendering position
166 The keyword "kern" is followed by three fields describing kerning between two
169 Field 1: the index of the left-hand glyph
170 Field 2: the index of the right-hand glyph
171 Field 3: kerning distance between the glyphs
176 2.0 "The release I forgot to make three years ago"
177 - Alternate ways of specifying code point ranges
178 - Multiple code point ranges can be specified
179 - Option to generate non-power-of-two images
180 - Support for distance field generation
183 - Controllable margin and padding in packed mode
184 - Do not generate overly large images in sequential grid mode
187 - Improve the packing algorithm
188 - Non-square cells for grid mode
189 - Option to invert colors
190 - Include kerning information in definition file
193 - Restructure the code
194 - Add tight packing mode
195 - Autodetect cell size and chars-per-line in grid mode
198 - Write both X and Y offsets of glyphs to the definition file
199 - Output font ascent and descent to definition file
202 - Don't create too large image with sequential mode if the range is sparse
205 - Added output to stdout
206 - Clean up code a bit
207 - Added sequential mode
208 - Added definition file writing
211 - Added more verbosity
212 - Added transparency mode
220 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
221 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
222 as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
223 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
225 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
226 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
227 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
228 GNU General Public License for more details.
230 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
231 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
232 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.