CFF->TrueType

[behdad]

Anyone wants to put together a snippet that uses cu2qu to convert an OpenType CFF to TrueType flavor?

[anthrotype]

something like this?
googlefonts/cu2qu#47 (comment)

[behdad]

something like this?
googlefonts/cu2qu#47 (comment)

Yes please!

I'm starting to think that we should move Snippets inside Lib/fontTools so they can be called...

[anthrotype]

I'm starting to think that we should move Snippets inside Lib/fontTools so they can be called...

hmm, I wouldn't like to move the Snippets inside the core library. They are by definition incomplete, otherwise we would have already done that.

What I'm thinking instead is have a new fontTools.convert module (and a corresponding fonttools convert subcommand) that can be used to convert between the various font formats (TTF, CFF/OTF, WOFF, WOFF2, and... TTX). We could also abuse the ttx command for that, although the latter has a long history and we wouldn't be able to change too much its interface.

To avoid a circular dependency between fonttools and cu2qu, I was thinking we could split cu2qu in half: one part (cu2qu.__init__ and the cu2qu.pens.Cu2QuPen segment pen) would be moved inside fonttools, and the rest (cu2qu.ufo and the point pens) could stay in its own separate cu2qu package (or even moved inside ufo2ft).

Let me know what you think.
In the meantime, I can already push the CFF-to-OTF snippet.

[anthrotype]

I just added the "Snippets/otf2ttf.py", please test, thanks.

[anthrotype]

Done in 2a4b3d5

[twardoch]

I'm not sure if it's that simple — the "fonttools convert" function. Would it convert a TTC into multiple TTFs? Would it convert a TTF+gvar into a set of static TTFs? Would it convert an OTF+SVG into a TTF+sbix? And if not, why not?

I don't think it's so trivial anymore too define what exactly "convert" means. Such a converter would be great but I don't think it should be placed inside fontTools. It should be a separate app. The OTF+SVG to TTF+sbix conversion obviously would require an SVG rasterizer, other conversions might require FreeType or other dependencies.