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Video: Make a font in Inkscape

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By popular demand, a video on how to create your own TrueType font with Inkscape.

Written instructions, files and more information here.

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Comments

  1. You are really quite amazing!! So intelligent. I have a stupid question though. What is the benefit to having these as a font versus just an SVG of those designs for MTC or SCAL?

    • Personal preference, really. A dingbat font is an easy way to have dozens of related images together in one file and in a convenient form. I have been using dingbat fonts for years so it is a natural for me. In the case of SCAL or MTC is so easy to open a font and see all the thumbnails and then just click the button to put it on the mat. Also allows you to easily use your cutting images in other programs such as MSWord or Photoshop.

  2. Hi thank u for all your wonderful info u give . I have a question about inkscape. I have it. When I watch your videos you have a paint bucket with yours but I dont seem to have a paint bucket.(or i cant seem to find it) do u know why? Im new to all of this. Thanks for your help Chasity

    • Chasity,
      If you don’t see the Paint Bucket it is because your window isn’t large enough to see all the toolbar icons. Click the little continuation arrow at the bottom of the toolbar to reach the tools that aren’t displayed.

  3. Hello

    I have a problem I made a one letter in Illustrator, I save her in . svg, but after Import into Inkscape and click on Get curves from selection does not shows me a graph / letter.

    What is the problem?

    (Sorry for my bad English)

    • Hi Aleks,
      Make sure the character you made is part of the sample string. It starts out as “Sample Text” so a 1 or a b won’t show up. Good luck!

  4. Very nice, thanks! I was wondering if while you’re doing what you’re doing in Inkscape, you need to/can specify kerning data, or in other words, for every letter pair (e.g., aa, ab, ac,…ba, bb, bc …) the font must have to specify how much space to put between the letters for each possible combination, except for monospaced fonts like courier, right?

    If it were simply you needing to place your glyph in your template’s square in the right position, that would be easy, but I could swear I’ve seen fonts in which, for instance, the tail of the ‘y’ will actually get under the preceding letter, or the ‘o’ being under the preceding ‘T’ in some cases, or ‘e’ going under a preceding ‘V’ for instance, so it does seem like you need to specify nitty-gritty kerning data for each possible letter combination.

    • Pete,
      You may want to explore the kerning tab in the SVG Font Editor as it appears this is supported or at least planned for. I have been unable to find any documentation on this and didn’t need it to make dingbat fonts.

  5. Hi,I have big problem.When I click on ‘Get curves from selection’ button I get error,’The selected object does not have a path description’.I have done everything like is in the video,but nothing happend.I import svg object,then when I choose ‘Union’ from path menu I get error ‘One of the objects is not a path,cannot perform boolean operation’.Thanks in advance.

    Dany

    • Dany,
      When you click to select the imported svg, the infobar at the bottom of the screen should read “path”(not group or ellipse or rectangle or clipped path or anything else). If it doesn’t you will need to ungroup, release clips, path>object to path or whatever is indicated until it says only path. Once it is a path, the rest of the process should work properly.

      • Gday,
        I have the same problem, and the advice seemed to work. Except now each time I add a glyph I get a white box instead of a black one as the example text. I wonder if I’m just not seeing the image because its to big or small.

        Is there a specific size image I should be using?

  6. Hi, Can anyone think of a reason I cannot set the Glyph to be “f000”. Assigning my image to “a” works fine but I want my Glyphs assigned f000, f001 etc. I have seen this done on other sites so know it must be possible. Oh and in the Inkscape preview it works

    • Chris, I’m doing something similar now. I’m not sure if you figured it out, but it seems to work best if you simply copy and paste the unicode character directly into the matching string field.

  7. Great tutorial! Do you know of a way to make fonts like this in multiple colors? Thanks

  8. Hi, I loved your tutorial, and i’m making my own font using it. I’ve been looking for this kind of informantion for weeks, and I was glad to find your blog.
    I’m having a problem, tough. I scanned my hand written alphabet, but when I set the glyph it doesn’t show in the preview (when I capture the curve selection). I tried many times, but i can’t set the font. I have everything in curves, and i really don’t know what to do.
    Thank you! I loved you blog and I am following it.

  9. I think that is among the so much important information for me.
    And i’m happy reading your article. But wanna statement on some basic
    things, The site taste is great, the articles
    is in point of fact nice : D. Good process, cheers

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