All Bitmap Font

Matt Severin

Is it possible to use Robofont to generate a font file that is all from bitmaps?

I have a series of PNGs for each glyph, generated from a 3D program that I'd like to turn into a font file. I can import and see the bitmap in the Glyph Editor (excuse the image quality) but in the preview window I see this symbol, not the bitmap. Then when I generate the font and try to install it, via Fontbook, I don't see the bitmap glyphs in the Fontbook preview.

To be sure, I made some test vector glyphs, for troubleshooting, and these do appear in Fontbook.

I want to know if what I'm trying to do is possible (an all bitmap font file without tracing or vectorizing) and if there are steps unique to generating bitmap fonts that I'm missing.

frederik

he Matt

It is possible to import an image into a glyph. The image will be visible when you make the font overview cell bigger (see the slider at the bottom)

RF does not generate color fonts. There are already some extensions generating color fonts like RoboChrome. However RoboChrome does not build SIBX table from glyph image data.

Here is a small script that does generate a .ttf and adds all images in a SBIX table.

hope this helps:

import os
from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
from fontTools.ttLib.tables._s_b_i_x import table__s_b_i_x
from fontTools.ttLib.tables.sbixStrike import Strike
from fontTools.ttLib.tables.sbixGlyph import Glyph as sbixGlyph

from lib.tools.misc import tiff2png

import AppKit

bitmapSizes = [1000]

font = CurrentFont()

def getImageData(image):
    x, y, maxx, maxy = image.bounds
    w = maxx - x
    h = maxy - y    
    
    ciImage, imageRect = glyph.image.getRepresentation("doodle.CIImageFiltered") 
    
    alpha = 1
    if image.color:
        alpha = image.color.alpha
        
    im = AppKit.NSImage.alloc().initWithSize_((w, h))
    im.lockFocus()
    
    t = AppKit.NSAffineTransform.alloc().init()
    t.setTransformStruct_(image.transformation)
    t.concat()
    
    ciImage.drawAtPoint_fromRect_operation_fraction_((-x, -y), imageRect, AppKit.NSCompositeSourceOver, alpha)
    im.unlockFocus()

    return tiff2png(im.TIFFRepresentation())



if font is not None:
    ttfpath = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), f"{font.info.familyName}-{font.info.styleName}.ttf")
    font.generate(format="ttf", path=ttfpath)

    ft = TTFont(ttfpath)

    sbix = table__s_b_i_x("sbix")

    for ppem in sorted(bitmapSizes):
        currentStrike = Strike(ppem=ppem)
        for glyph in font:
            if glyph.image:           
                imageData = getImageData(glyph.image)
                
                originOffsetX, originOffsetY = glyph.image.offset
                currentStrike.glyphs[glyph.name] = sbixGlyph(
                        glyphName=glyph.name,
                        graphicType="png",
                        originOffsetX=int(round(originOffsetX)),
                        originOffsetY=int(round(originOffsetY)),
                        imageData=imageData
                    )
        sbix.strikes[ppem] = currentStrike
    
    ft["sbix"] = sbix 
    ft.save(ttfpath)
    ft.close()

SOLVED All Bitmap Font