The SmuflFont class defined in this module wraps SMuFL specific methods around fontforge.font objects.

A copy of the glyphnames.json file from the SMuFL specification must be saved in the same folder. Download it from the SMuFL repository.

Just give me that metadata already

If all you need is a metadata file for your music font, copy ffsmufl.py and glyphnames.json to the folder where your font is saved and edit the ENGRAVING_DEFAULTS dictionary at the bottom of the script as necessary. Then run the script with an external Python 3 interpreter that has access to the fontforge module (the script does not work with Fontforge's internal script console).

OS-dependant incantations:

On Windows, assuming ffpython.exe is in your PATH:

ffpython ./ffsmufl.py ./myfont.sfd

On Mac, assuming this monster is the path to your fontforge binary:

/Applications/FontForge.app/Contents/Resources/opt/local/bin/fontforge ./ffsmufl.py ./myfont.sfd

On Linux, assuming you have installed the Python bindings for Fontforge:

python3 ./ffsmufl.py ./myfont.sfd

Advanced usage

If you need to create font metadata as part of a more involved scripted procedure, you can import the SmuflFont class into your script. The class is just a thin wrapper around a fontforge.font object that is accessible as the public .font member, so you can use the whole Fontforge API with it.

import fontforge
from ffsmufl import SmuflFont


# create a SMuFL font object in memory from your project files:
with SmuflFont("path/to/my/font.ufo") as f:

    # use the Fontforge API on the font member
    for glyph in f.font:
        ...

    # set your engraving defaults
    f.engraving_defaults = { ... }

    # generate and export metadata
    f.export_metadata()

    # build the font itself
    f.export_font()