diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 17 |
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9961600 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +# What is sfntly? + +sfntly is pronounced "esfontlee". + +sfntly is a Java and C++ library for using, editing, and creating sfnt container based fonts (e.g. OpenType, TrueType). This library was initially created by Google's Font Team and the C++ port was done by the Chrome team. It has been made open source. + +The basic features of sfntly are the reading, editing, and writing of an sfnt container font. Fonts that use an sfnt container include OpenType, TrueType, AAT/GX, and Graphite. sfntly isn't itself a tool that is usable by an end user - it is a library that allows software developers to build tools that manipulate fonts in ways that haven't been easily accessible to most developers. The sfntly library is available in Java with a partial C++ port. However, we have included some font tools that are built on top of sfntly: a font subsetter, font dumper, a font linter, some compression utilities. + +The uses of sfntly are really anything that you can think of that involves reading and/or editing fonts. Right now, the Java version is the core library used to power Google's Web Fonts project. There it is used for all font manipulation - to read font data, to pull apart fonts, and to then reassemble them before they are streamed out to a user. Portions of the font that are not needed - specific glyph ranges or features - are stripped using sfntly to minimize the size of the streamed font. The C++ port is used somewhat similarly within Chrome to subset fonts for insertion into a PDF for viewing or printing. Though the features stripped in the font are different in Chrome than in Web Fonts because the end use is different. + +Using sfntly you can read and extract any of the tables in a font. The tables are the individual data structures within the font for each of the features and functionality: glyph outlines, character maps, kerning, meta data, etc. If you look over the OpenType and TrueType specs, you will see a number of categories of tables. sfntly currently supports all of the required tables, the TrueType outline tables, bitmap glyph tables, and a couple of the other miscellaneous tables. This level of support provides for many of the needs developers have related to the informational reading of font data. It also covers a lot of the editing needs. + +To get started with sfntly: clone the repository and follow the quickstart.txt guide in the Java directory + +have fun + +Stuart Gill - sfntly Architect and Lead Developer |